VICARS & TARTS chapter I

The House of the Rising Sun

A blues song of anonymous authorship, “House of the Rising Sun”, also sometimes called "Rising Sun Blues", which tells of a life gone wrong in New Orleans.  is a tale of sin, sexual ruin and a tortured soul in New Orleans. The song has been recorded by various artists including Bob Dylan and Dolly Parton. 
Many debate the true meaning of the title, arguing that it could be a euphemism for a whorehouse, a jail, a slave plantation or a specific establishment in the French Quarter. The most famous version of the song was by the British-Invasion-era band The Animals, who maintained it was an old English folk song emigrants brought to America (originally it was a Soho brothel instead of a New Orleans one). Thanks to Eric Burdon’s (Eric Victor Burdon (born 11 May 1941) English singer-songwriter best known as a member and vocalist of rock band The Animals and the funk band War and for his aggressive stage performance) chilling howls, the Animals’ adaptation would become a classic in its own right and would make Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All-Time. 

Origin and early versions

Like many classic folk ballads, the authorship of "The House of the Rising Sun" is uncertain. Musicologists say that it is based on the tradition of broadside ballads such as The Unfortunate Rake of the 18th century and that English emigrants took the song to America where it was adapted to its later New Orleans setting. Alan Price of The Animals has even claimed that the song was originally a sixteenth-century English folk song about a Soho brothel.

The oldest known existing recording is by Appalachian artists Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster, who recorded it for Vocalion Records in 1934. Ashley said he had learned it from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley.

The song was among those collected by folklorist Alan Lomax, who, along with his father, was a curator of the Archive of American Folk Song for the Library of Congress. On an expedition with his wife to eastern Kentucky, Lomax set up his recording equipment in Middlesborough, Kentucky, in the house of a singer and activist named Tilman Cadle. In 1937 he recorded a performance by Georgia Turner, the 16-year-old daughter of a local miner. He called it "The Rising Sun Blues". Lomax later recorded a different version sung by Bert Martin and a third sung by Daw Henson, both eastern Kentucky singers. In his 1941 songbook Our Singing Country'F', Lomax credits the lyrics to Turner, with reference to Martin's version. According to his later writing, the melody bears similarities to the traditional English ballad "Matty Groves".

Roy Acuff, an "early-day friend and apprentice" of Ashley, learned it from him and later recorded it as "Rising Sun". In 1941, Woody Guthrie recorded a version. A recording made in 1947 by Josh White, who is also credited with having written new words and music that have subsequently been popularized in the versions made by many other later artists, was released by Mercury Records in 1950. Lead Belly recorded two versions of the song in February 1944 and in October 1948, called "In New Orleans" and "The House of the Rising Sun" respectively; the latter was recorded in sessions that later became the album Lead Belly's Last Sessions (1994, Smithsonian Folkways).

In 1957 Glenn Yarbrough recorded the song for Elektra Records. The song is also credited to Ronnie Gilbert on one of The Weavers albums released in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Pete Seeger released a version on Folkways Records in 1958, which was re-released by Smithsonian Folkways in 2009. Frankie Laine recorded the song then titled "New Orleans" on his 1959 album Balladeer. Actor and comedian Andy Griffith recorded the song on his 1959 album Andy Griffith Shouts The Blues And Old Timey Songs. Joan Baez recorded it in 1960 on her debut album; she frequently performed the song in concert throughout her career. In 1960 Miriam Makeba recorded the song on her eponymous RCA album.

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 on the documentary No Direction Home, Van Ronk said that he was intending to record the song, and that Dylan copied his version. He recorded it soon thereafter on Just Dave Van Ronk.

"I had learned it sometime in the 1950s, from a recording by Hally Wood, the Texas singer and collector, who had got it from an Alan Lomax field recording by a Kentucky woman named Georgia Turner. I put a different spin on it by altering the chords and using a bass line that descended in half steps—a common enough progression in jazz, but unusual among folksingers. By the early 1960s, the song had become one of my signature pieces, and I could hardly get off the stage without doing it."

Nina Simone recorded her first version on Nina at the Village Gate in 1962. Later versions include the 1965 recording in Colombia by Los Speakers in Spanish called "La casa del sol naciente", which was also the title of their second album. They earned a silver record (for sales of over 15,000 copies). The Chambers Brothers recorded a version on "Feelin' The Blues", released on Vault records.

The House of the Rising Sun

There is a house in New Orleans

 They call the Rising Sun

 And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy

 And God I know I'm one

My mother was a tailor

 She sewed my new bluejeans

 My father was a gamblin' man

 Down in New Orleans

Now the only thing a gambler needs

 Is a suitcase and trunk

 And the only time he's satisfied

 Is when he's on a drunk

Oh mother tell your children

 Not to do what I have done

 Spend your lives in sin and misery

 In the House of the Rising Sun

Well, I got one foot on the platform

 The other foot on the train

 I'm goin' back to New Orleans

 To wear that ball and chain

Well, there is a house in New Orleans

 They call the Rising Sun

 And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy

 And God I know I'm one

Eric Burdon & The Animals - 'House of the Rising Sun',
at the San Javier International Jazz Festival, Spain, July 22nd, 2011.

A real location?

Various places in New Orleans, Louisiana have been proposed as the inspiration for the song, with varying plausibility. 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. One theory speculated the song is about a daughter who killed her father, an alcoholic gambler who had beaten his wife. Therefore, the House of the Rising Sun may be a jail-house, from which one would be the first person to see the sun rise (an idea supported by the lyric mentioning "a ball and chain", though that phrase has been used as slang to describe marital relationships for at least as long as the song has been in print). Because the song was often sung by women, another theory is that the House of the Rising Sun was where prostitutes were detained while they were treated for syphilis. Since cures with mercury were ineffective, going back was very unlikely.

Only three candidates have historical documentation as using the name "Rising Sun", from listings in old period city directories and newspapers. The first was a small short-lived hotel on Conti Street in the French Quarter in the 1820s. It burned down in 1822. An excavation and document search in early 2005 found evidence supporting this claim, including an advertisement with language that may have euphemistically indicated prostitution. An unusually large number of pots of rouge and cosmetics were found by archaeologists at the site.

The second possibility was a late 19th-century "Rising Sun Hall" listed in late 19th century city directories on what is now Cherokee Street at 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. It also is no longer extant. Definite links to gambling or prostitution (if any) are undocumented for either of these buildings.

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. In various advertisements described as a "Restaurant", a "Lager Beer Salon", and a "Coffee House" - at the time, businesses in New Orleans listed as "coffee houses" often also sold alcoholic beverages.

Bizarre New Orleans, a guide book on New Orleans, asserts that the real house was at 1614 Esplanade Avenue between 1862 and 1874 and was purportedly named for its madam, Marianne LeSoleil Levant whose name translates from French as "the rising sun".

It is also 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 Orleans Parish Women's Prison, 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.

The gender of the singer is flexible. Earlier versions of the song are often sung from the female perspective, a woman who followed a drunk or a gambler to New Orleans and became a prostitute in the House of the Rising Sun (or, depending on one's interpretation, an inmate in a prison of the same name), such as in Joan Baez's version on her self-titled 1960 debut album, or Jody Miller's 1973 single. The Animals version was sung from a perspective of a male, for whom the house has been his "ruin". Bob Dylan's 1962 version and Shawn Mullins' covered version on his album 9th Ward Pickin' Parlor is sung from the female perspective.

Not everyone, however, believes that the house actually existed. 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."