The Big Easy List: The Rising Sun

Tweet

Ah, what a day. I’m going to get a million tomatoes today…and y’all are going to throw them at me!! Here’s the song you’ve been waiting for…and definitely NOT the version you’ve been waiting for! I think there’s one more of those in the countdown (in the top ten), but none of the “not the version you’ve were thinking of” songs this month will top this one. The Rising Sun - Roy Acuff And why not? This version was only recorded about 27 years before the Animals’ most famous version. (To dispel a couple of myths about the Animals’ version of “House of the Rising Sun”: it was NOT the “first four-minute song to hit #1.” That distinction belongs to Marty Robbins’ “El Paso.” It was also not the first “traditional” song to hit #1, as “Tom Dooley” hit #1 in 1958.) And this was hardly the first recording, as it was first recorded in 1933 (by Clarence Ashley)! One of the amazing things about songs like this is the way they evolve over the centuries. Yes, centuries. Musicologists and folklorists who study such things estimate that this song may go back to 17th century England. The notion that this is a song about a brothel also traces back that far, with the great folklorist Alan Lomax discovering two old English folk songs set in a “house of ill-repute” known as “The Rising Sun.” There was also a song called “Rounder’s Luck,” by a long-forgotten (by everyone but me, of course ) country duo called the Callahan Brothers, which was released between the Ashley and Acuff versions in 1935. That version focused more on the notion of the “Rising Sun” being a bar (although brothels frequently served both “lusts”). Those old folk songs stayed in people’s minds as they made their way to America…or at least, part of the songs. Over the years the songs may have changed location (“New Orleans” was supposedly once Lowestoft, England, the eastern-most point in England) and added or dropped a verse here and there. (Funny how a lot of the old “murder ballads” always had a victim named Mary or Katy, and the murderer was always named Willy. ) Then along came recording technology and they sort of gelled into the version everyone knows. That’s how the song the Animals recorded in 1964 evolved. How they got it was simply knowing it from folk circles. They were a “folk band” at the time (or so called…that word was tossed around like promises from a politician back in those days, because many people still considered rock and roll to be a passing fad), and they were on tour with Chuck Berry. Eric Burdon, the lead vocalist on that classic version, said that they wanted something that didn’t sound like it was copying Chuck, so they took this oft-recorded blues/folk ballad and began performing it on tour. The Animals recorded it in one take, no overdubs, and unleashed it on the world. It’s a timeless classic, so much so that Burdon said, “When they put me in the grave there will be angels flying around, singing this song.” So the Roy Acuff version is used to help me give you a history of this legendary song. You probably won’t like his version, but there’s always the Animals’ version available! The Rising Sun Traditional Recorded by Roy Acuff Released as a single, 1938 (Also famously recorded by the Animals, 1964) NEW ORLEANS LYRICS: There is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun