Guitar Tabs for
House of the Rising Sun.

"The House of the Rising Sun" is an old folk song from the United States. Also called "House of the Rising Sun" or occasionally "Rising Sun Blues", it tells of a life gone wrong in New Orleans. Depending on the version, the song may be sung from the perspective of a woman or a man. The most famous version was recorded by the English rock group The Animals in 1964, which was a number one hit in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and Canada.

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 which were taken to America by early settlers. Many of these had the theme of "if only" and after a period of evolution, they emerge as American songs like "Streets of Laredo". The tradition of the blues combined with these in which the telling of a sad story has a therapeutic effect.

The oldest known existing recording is by versatile Smoky Mountain artists Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster and was made in 1933. Ashley said he had learned it from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley. Alger "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. The Callahan Brothers recorded the song in 1934.

The song might have been lost to posterity had it not been collected by folklorist Alan Lomax. Lomax and his father were curators of the Archive of American Folk Song for the Library of Congress from 1932. They searched the country for songs. On an expedition with his wife to eastern Kentucky Lomax set up his recording equipment in Middlesborough, Kentucky in the house of someone called Tilman Cable.

On 15 Sept 1937 he recorded a performance by Georgia Turner, the 16 year-old daughter of a miner. He called it The Risin' Sun Blues. Lomax later recorded a different version sung by Bert Martin. Lomax, in his seminal 1941 songbook Our Singing Country, credited the lyrics to Georgia Turner, with reference to Bert Martin's version. The melody bears similarities to a traditional English ballad, Matty Groves.

Roy Acuff, who recorded the song commercially on November 3, 1938, may have learned the song from Clarence Ashley with whom he sometimes performed. 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 1957 Glenn Yarbrough recorded the song for Elektra Records. The song is also credited to Ronnie Gilbert on one of the old Weavers albums with Pete Seeger that was released in the late 40's or early 50's. Joan Baez recorded it in 1960 on her premier album.

In late 1961, Bob Dylan recorded the song for his first and self-titled album, Bob Dylan, released in March 1962. Dylan claims a writer's credit for the song. In an interview on the documentary No Direction Home, Dave Van Ronk said that he was intending to record it at that time, and that Bob Dylan copied his version of the song.

An interview with Eric Burdon of The Animals revealed that he first heard the song in a club in Newcastle and it was sung by a Northumbrian folk singer called Johnny Handle.  This interview refutes assertions that the inspiration for The Animals' arrangement came directly from Dylan's recording, from Josh White or Nina Simone (who recorded it before Dylan on Nina at the Village Gate).

Regardless, the Animals enjoyed a huge hit with the song, much to Dylan's chagrin when his version was referred to as a cover of The Animals' version - the irony of which was not lost on Van Ronk. Dave Van Ronk went on record as saying that the whole issue was a "tempest in a teapot", and that Dylan stopped playing the song after The Animals' hit because fans accused Dylan of plagiarizing the Animals' version. Bob Dylan has said he first heard The Animals' version on his automobile radio and "jumped out of his car seat" because he liked it so much.

Regardless of its sources of inspiration, The Animals' take on "The House of the Rising Sun" sounded wholly new: writer Dave Marsh described it as "the first folk-rock hit," sounding "as if they'd connected the ancient tune to a live wire," while writer Ralph McLean of the BBC agreed that "it was arguably the first folk rock tune," calling it "a revolutionary single" after which "the face of modern music was changed forever."

The Animals' version transposes the narrative of the song from the point of view of a woman led into a life of degradation, to that of a male, whose father was now a gambler and drunkard, as opposed to the sweetheart in earlier versions.

The Animals had begun featuring their arrangement of "House of the Rising Sun" during a joint concert tour with Chuck Berry, using it as their closing number to differentiate themselves from acts which always closed with straight rockers.

Recorded in just one take it started with a famous electric guitar A minor chord arpeggio.  The performance took off with Eric Burdon's lead vocal, which has been variously described as "howling", "soulful", and "deep and gravelly as the north-east English coal town of Newcastle that spawned him." Finally, Alan Price's pulsating organ part completed the sound

"House of the Rising Sun" was a true trans-Atlantic hit, topping both the UK pop singles chart (in July of 1964) and the U.S. pop singles chart (in September, when it became the first British Invasion number one unconnected with The Beatles[13]); it was the group's breakthrough hit in both countries and became their signature song. The song was also a hit in a number of other countries.

The only rendition other than The Animals' to become a hit came in early 1970, when Detroit-based Frijid Pink released their take on the song. Sometimes described as done in psychedelic music style, Pink's rendition is actually more aligned with the proto-metal/proto-punk sound of fellow contemporaneous Detroit acts MC5 and The Stooges.

The Frijid Pink version of the song is in 4/4 time signature rather than the usual 6/8. The performance was driven by Gary Ray Thompson's distorted guitar with fuzz and wah wah effects, set against frenetic drumming from Richard Stevers. Lead singer Kelly Green's vocal phrasing almost exactly matched Eric Burdon's.

Regardless of its merits, the recording was indeed again a trans-Atlantic success, reaching number 7 on the U.S. pop singles chart, number 4 on the UK Singles Chart, and number 3 in Canada. It was awarded gold record status in the U.S. in May 1970 for selling a million copies. It also hit number one in a number of European countries, including West Germany and Norway. It would be Frijid Pink's only top ten hit.

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 where you are the first person to see the sun rise. 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 syphillis.

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 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.

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.

The Animals version was sung from a perspective of a male, warning about gambling and drinking. Bob Dylan's 1962 version and Shawn Mullins' recent covered version on his album "9th Ward Pickin' Parlor" is sung from the female perspective.