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The song then tapers off to a gentle ending, with Alan Price again taking the lead. One of the original versions reverses the genders and is about a woman who has no option but to return to that sort of life. First, there was that iconic guitar arpeggio to start the song that every learning guitarist tried to play but couldn’t. Then there was a powerful organ solo in the middle that ‘Pricey’ dragged out of his shaking Vox Continental. However, it was the vocals that set the song apart, especially when Eric went up an octave. The song was first recorded in 1933 by Clarence Ashley and Gwen Foster under the title “Rising Sun Blues.” In response to a question about the song’s origins, Ashley said that his grandfather had taught it to him.
The Modern Versions
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. In late 1961, Bob Dylan recorded the song for his debut album, released in March 1962. That release had no songwriting credit, but the liner notes indicate that Dylan learned this version of the song from Dave Van Ronk. In an interview for the documentary No Direction Home, Van Ronk said that he was intending to record the song and that Dylan copied his version. Van Ronk recorded it soon thereafter for the album Just Dave Van Ronk.
The House of the Rising Sun Lyrics
Pete Seeger released a version on Folkways Records in 1958, which was re-released by Smithsonian Folkways in 2009.[16] Andy Griffith recorded the song on his 1959 album Andy Griffith Shouts the Blues and Old Timey Songs. In 1960, Miriam Makeba recorded the song on her eponymous RCA album. Shortly after Gabriel quit Genesis in 1975, he climbed to the top of Little Solsbury Hill in Somerset, England, to reflect on his life-changing decision.
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Cyndi Lauper, ‘Time After Time’
Within a year “Old Town Road” was the longest-running Number One song of all time, seeming to sum up eons of American cross-cultural love and theft in just one minute and 53 seconds. In 2004, Rolling Stone published its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It’s one of the most widely read stories in our history, viewed hundreds of millions of times on this site. But a lot has changed since 2004; back then the iPod was relatively new, and Billie Eilish was three years old. They each sent in a ranked list of their top 50 songs, and we tabulated the results.
The Animals' version of the American folk song is considered one of the 20th century’s British pop classics. While the original version was sung in the character of a woman led into a life of degradation, the Animals' version is told from the view of a young man who follows his father into alcoholism and gambling ruin. Far from the international superstar he’d become, Toronto singer-songwriter Abel Tesfaye didn’t even send out photos or do any interviews when he released the first Weeknd album. “The whole ‘enigmatic artist’ thing, I just ran with it,” he said. For her second album, Del Rey went for a sound even more lush than on her debut, and the relentless strings of “Summertime Sadness” recall the soundtracks Angelo Badalamenti composed for David Lynch’s films.
Pubs of two to three hundred years ago were often “houses of ill-repute.” The song was likely carried to America by immigrants who performed it there, from whence local names and traditions became intertwined. Keynote Records released one by Josh White in 1942, and Decca Records released one also in 1942 with music by White and the vocals performed by Libby Holman. 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.
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So, there are some interesting references by people who have shed some historical light on the song. Furthermore, it seems that the song has been in existence for at least three hundred years. It has been known under a variety of names and has also switched genres. In some versions, it is about a woman who is returning to prostitution. In others, a man sings the narrative bemoaning his inability to let go of his sordid past, which includes drink, women, and gambling.
The Animals were from the Northeast of England and were a well-known blues band even in London, 300 miles south. Their first single, “Baby Let Me Take You Home,” was an indication that they were going to be good. Released in 1964, it reached #21 in the UK and almost broke into the Top 100 in America. Producer Mickie Most was looking for a follow-up and wanted something different. Since the origins of “House of the Rising Sun“ may have been at a time when very few ordinary people were literate, nothing about the original song has been written down.
The narrative of the lyrics has varied between male and female narrators. The earliest known printed version from Gordon's column is about a woman's warning. The earliest known recording of the song by Ashley is about a rounder, a male character. 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.
The Kentucky folk singer Jean Ritchie sang a different traditional version of the song to Lomax in 1949, which can be heard online courtesy of the Alan Lomax archive. Dillard Chandler of Madison County, North Carolina sang a variant of the song beginning "There was a sport in New Orleans". 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. "Playing 'House' on the Chuck Berry tour, we all knew it had to be recorded and released instantly," Burdon told Uncut.
The White Stripes song "We're Going To Be Friends" is very innocent, but Jack White feared it would be interpreted cynically. Issued in June, "House of the Rising Sun" hit No. 1 in July 1964 in the U.K., then followed in the U.S. that September. There is a house in New OrleansThey call the Rising SunWhere many poor boys to destruction has goneAnd me, oh God, are one.
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