The House of the Rising Sun is one of the best-known rock songs, a landmark across many genres: American blues and folk, the British Invasion, garage rock and even punk. Its origins are complicated and contested; people still argue whether it was Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, or The Animals who ushered the song into the popular mainstream.
It probably dates to 18th-century American folk tradition but entered ethnographic fact on September 15, 1937, when folklorist Alan Lomax taped a 16-year-old miner's daughter, Georgia Turner, performing the song in Middlesborough, Kentucky. She received 117 $ for the recording.
Since then, many have rendered their own versions, from Roy Acuff (1937), Woody Guthrie (1941), Lead Belly (1948), Glenn Yarbrough (1957), to Bob Dylan (1961). The song, however, did not become a classic until 1964, when the The Animals from Newcastle, Britain made it into a number one hit.
Like many classic folk ballads, the authorship of "The House of the Rising Sun" is uncertain. Alan Lomax, author of the 1941 songbook Our Singing Country, wrote that the melody was taken from a traditional English ballad and the lyrics written by a pair of Kentuckians named Georgia Turner and Bert Martin. Other scholars have proposed different explanations, although Lomax's is generally considered most plausible.
Though the phrase "House of the Rising Sun" is often understood as a euphemism for a brothel (but it is not known whether or not the house described in the lyrics was an actual or fictitious place), the original song is more likely to tell the story of a young woman, a daughter who killed her father, an alcoholic gambler who'd beaten his wife (her mother).
Therefore, the House of the rising sun is rather a jail house - from which you are the first person to see the sun rise, because of its Eastern location, in Louisiana.
The oldest known existing recording is by versatile entertainer Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster and was released in 1933. Ashley said he had learned it from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley. Texas Alexander's "The Risin' Sun", which was recorded in 1928, is sometimes mentioned as the first recording, but this is a completely different song.
Roy Acuff, who recorded the song commercially on November 3, 1938, may have learned this number from such neighboring Smoky Mountain artists as Clarence Ashley or the Callahan Brothers, an influential duet team of the '30s and '40s. In 1941, Woody Guthrie recorded a version. In late 1948 Lead Belly recorded a version called "In New Orleans" in the sessions that later became the album Lead Belly's Last Sessions (1994, Smithsonian Folkways.
In an interview by Martin Scorsese in his Dylan movie No Direction Home, folksinger Dave Van Ronk said that he had originally worked out the arrangement for his coffee house act. Dylan then "borrowed" the arrangement for his first album, 1962's Bob Dylan, without Van Ronk's permission, and recorded it before Van Ronk had got around to recording it himself. Van Ronk was also displeased because he thought that Dylan had butchered the song. Van Ronk was subsequently upset when people referred to his version as a cover of Dylan's song.
The inspiration for The Animals' arrangement is sometimes said to come from Dylan's recording, and other times said to be from Josh White or Nina Simone (who recorded it before Dylan on Nina at the Village Gate).
Various places in New Orleans, Louisiana have been proposed as the inspiration for the song, with varying plausibility. Only two candidates have historical documentation as using the name "Rising Sun", both having listings in old period city directories.
The first was a small short-lived hotel on Conti Street in the French Quarter in the 1820s. An excavation and document search in early 2005 found evidence supporting this claim, including an advertisement with language that may have euphemistically indicated prostitution.
The second was a late 19th century "Rising Sun Hall" on the riverfront of the uptown Carrollton neighborhood, which seems to have been a building owned and used for meetings of a Social Aid & Pleasure Club, commonly rented out for dances and functions. Definite links to gambling or prostitution, if any, are undocumented for either of these buildings, neither of which still exists.
Another claim is that The House of the Rising Sun actually existed between 1862 and about 1874 and was run by a Madam Marianne LeSoleil Levant whose name translates from French as "the rising sun". Offbeat New Orleans, a guide book on New Orleans, asserts that the real house was at 826-830 St. Louis Street between 1862 and 1874 and was purportedly named for its madam, Marianne LeSoleil Levant.
It is possible that the "House of the Rising Sun" is a metaphor for either the slave pens of the plantation, the plantation house, or the plantation itself, which were the subjects and themes of many traditional blues songs.
Dave van Ronk claimed in his autobiography that he had seen pictures of the old New Orleans Prison for Women, the entrance to which was decorated with a rising sun design. He considered this proof that the House of the Rising Sun had been a nickname for the prison. In this way the French version has it right. Pénitencier means prison.
Not everyone, however, believes that the house even existed at all. Quoted on the BBC's 'h2g2' database, Pamela D. Arceneaux, a research librarian working at the Williams Research Center in New Orleans is quoted as saying: "I have made a study of the history of prostitution in New Orleans and have often confronted the perennial question, 'Where is the House of the Rising Sun?' without finding a satisfactory answer. Although it is generally assumed that the singer is referring to a brothel, there is actually nothing in the lyrics that indicate that the 'house' is a brothel. Many knowledgeable persons have conjectured that a better case can be made for either a gambling hall or a prison; however, to paraphrase Freud: sometimes lyrics are just lyrics."
Here are the songs I gathered
01 Ashley and Foster - Rising Sun blues (1933)
02 Georgia Turner - The House Of The Rising Sun (Rising Sun Blues)
03 Roy Acuff - The Rising Sun
04 The Almanac Singers - House of the Rising Sun
05 Leadbelly with Marta - House of the Rising Sun
05 Woody Guthrie - House of the Rising Sun
05 Leadbelly - House of the Rising Sun
06 Josh White - House of the Rising Sun
07 The Weavers - House of the Rising Sun
08 Dave van Ronk - House of the Rising Sun
09 Nina Simone - the House of the Rising Sun
10 Bob Dylan - House of the Rising Sun
10 Joan Baez - House of the Rising Sun
11 Doc Watson - House of the Rising Sun
12 The Animals - The House of the Rising Sun
13 Johnny Hallyday - Le penitencier
14 Jimi Hendrix - House of the Rising Sun
15 Frijid Pink - House of the Rising Sun
16 Tracy Chapman - House of the Rising Sun
17 Be Good Tanyas - The House of the Rising Sun
Thanks to Wikipedia and Arnold Rypens
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