Behind The Song Lyrics: House of the Rising Sun, The Animals
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The song’s verses are closer to being spoken rather than sung, and tell the story of a boy named Johnny, in a variant on the classic deal with the Devil. The song was the band’s biggest pop hit, reaching number three on the Billboard Hot 100. Like many folk songs, "The House of the Rising Sun" is of uncertain authorship.
Frijid Pink version
His young acolyte Bob Dylan largely mimicked Van Ronk’s arrangement of the song and included it on his debut album. Across the pond at around the same time, Burdon apparently heard the song from a local folk singer in England. Burdon brought it into the Animals, who electrified the song for their 1964 self-titled debut album. Hilton Valentine played the stoic arpeggiated guitar part that foundations the song, while Alan Price tore into the organ solo as if trying to free every tortured soul trapped in this sinister place. In late 1961, Bob Dylan recorded the song for his debut album, released in March 1962.
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The song is often heard in the soundtracks of popular TV shows (The West Wing and Supernatural) and movies (Suicide Squad). Now in its 26th year, Kilkenny Roots festival remains firm in its intentions to devise a programme of modest but often joyous events that celebrate songwriters, singers and songs. Visitors to the festival over the past quarter-century include many praised Americana/roots performers; this year’s line-up includes such notable figures as the Handsome Family, Joachim Cooder, Peter Case, Sid Griffin, Willie Mason, Sam Outlaw, Jeffrey Foucault and Ireland’s John Blek & the Rats.
Early commercial folk and blues releases
But it’s hard to imagine that anybody will ever again inhabit that doomed soul at the epicenter of the tale quite as well. A song is written, and, if it’s special enough, it hangs around waiting for an artist to claim it, putting their indelible stamp on it so that all other versions are henceforth compared to that one unforgettable take. Nobody is sure who wrote “House of the Rising Sun.” But we do know that the Animals, powered by the blustery vocals of Eric Burdon, claimed it. The oldest known recording of the song, under the title "Rising Sun Blues", is by Appalachian artists Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster, who recorded it in 1933.
The musicologist Alan Lomax couldn’t even pinpoint the song’s exact origin, although he found evidence that jazz musicians knew of it even before World War I. Early versions of the song had promoted the meaning that the Rising Sun was a brothel. In these variations, the narrator is a woman bemoaning her return to prostitution. Male singers made it “the ruin of many a poor boy,” which transformed the title establishment into a gambling den. An interview with Eric Burdon revealed that he first heard the song in a club in Newcastle, England, where it was sung by the Northumbrian folk singer Johnny Handle. The Animals were on tour with Chuck Berry and chose it because they wanted something distinctive to sing. Versions of the song have been recorded by many notable artists including Lead Belly, Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, Nina Simone, Adolescents, The Ventures, Duane Eddy and Five Finger Death Punch.
The Parton version makes it quite blunt, with a few new lyric lines that were written by Parton. Parton's remake reached number 14 on the US country singles chart and crossed over to the pop charts, where it reached number 77 on the Billboard Hot 100; it also reached number 30 on the US Adult Contemporary chart. Parton has occasionally performed the song live, including on her 1987–88 television show, in an episode taped in New Orleans. "The House of the Rising Sun" is a traditional folk song, sometimes called "Rising Sun Blues". Although the date and author of the song are unknown, some musicologists have said that it resembled ballads of the 16th century, and could very easily have derived from one of that time.
Galway Theatre Festival, established in 2008 to provide a creative lifeline for independent and rising artists based in the west, is renowned for its edgy sense of adventure. Highlights of this year’s festival include Thisispopbaby’s Party Scene; Curious Pigeons (commissioned by Culture Liverpool); The Dead House, the debut play by Martin Beanz Ward; and Gammy, Kate Finnegan’s play about suppressed female anger and mislaid worth. Many have sung “House of the Rising Sun” before Eric Burdon took it on with the Animals, and many will sing it in the future. Its psychological insight and philosophical meaning are all too relevant for this song to be anything but timeless.
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Have You Ever Been To The House of the Rising Sun? - Odyssey
Have You Ever Been To The House of the Rising Sun?.
Posted: Thu, 30 Jun 2016 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Everything was going fine and, "Hey, would it be okay for me to record your arrangement of 'House of the Rising Sun?'" he asked. In 1962, Bob Dylan had sung this grim tale of a Southern girl trapped in a New Orleans whorehouse. A third was "The Rising Sun", which advertised in several local newspapers in the 1860s, located on what is now the lake side of the 100 block of Decatur Street.[110] In various advertisements it is described as a "Restaurant", a "Lager Beer Salon", and a "Coffee House". At the time, New Orleans businesses listed as coffee houses often also sold alcoholic beverages.
As a popular folk song, the oldest record of “House of the Rising Sun” in reference to a song was 1905, and it was first recorded in 1933 by an Appalachian group. Other early recordings include Woody Guthrie’s version from 1941 and Bob Dylan in 1961. The version by the Animals, however, is by far the most popular, and Dylan is often annoyed when it is assumed that he covered that song from them. Five studio albums of original material in less than 12 years is a good strike rate, but it’s considerably better when you gauge the quality of the work.
The song was first collected in Appalachia in the 1930s, but probably has its roots in traditional English folk song. In 2014, Five Finger Death Punch released a cover version for their album The Wrong Side of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell, Volume 2. Five Finger Death Punch's remake reached number 7 on the US Billboard Mainstream Rock chart.
Last year was a particularly tragic one for the Irish music industry, with the deaths of Sinéad O’Connor, Shane MacGowan and Christy Dignam, the last of whom this evening applauds. When the show was announced earlier this year, the promoters said it would feature “some of the biggest names in Irish music ... Performing Dignam’s songs that he sang throughout his career up to his final album”. At the time of going to print, however, the line-up had not been announced.
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