The House of Rising Sun by Animals

American folk song, become famous as recorded by "Animals" in 1964

Like many classic folk ballads, "The House of the Rising Sun" is of uncertain authorship. 

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

***

The song was recorded in just one take on 18 May 1964, and it starts with a now-famous electric guitar A minor chord arpeggio by Hilton Valentine.

According to Valentine, he simply took Dylan's chord sequence and played it as an arpeggio. The performance takes off with Burdon's lead vocal, which has been variously described as "howling," "soulful," and as "...deep and gravelly as the north-east English coal town of Newcastle that spawned him." Finally, Alan Price's pulsating organ part (played on a Vox Continental) completes the sound. Burdon later said, "We were looking for a song that would grab people's attention."

As recorded, "House of the Rising Sun" ran four and a half minutes, regarded as far too long for a pop single at the time. Producer Most, who initially did not really want to record the song at all, said that on this occasion – "Everything was in the right place ... It only took 15 minutes to make so I can't take much credit for the production" – nonetheless was now a believer and declared it a single at its full length, saying "We're in a microgroove world now, we will release it."

In the United States however, the original single (MGM 13264) was a 2:58 version. 

***

"House of Rising Sun" was said to have been known by miners in 1905. 

The oldest published version of the lyrics is that printed by Robert Winslow Gordon in 1925, in a column "Old Songs That Men Have Sung" in Adventure Magazine. The lyrics of that version begin:

There is a house in New Orleans, it's called the Rising Sun

It's been the ruin of many a poor girl

Great God, and I for one

The oldest known recording of the song, under the title "Rising Sun Blues", is by Appalachian artists Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster, who recorded it for Vocalion Records on 6 September 1933.

***

Like many classic folk ballads, "The House of the Rising Sun" is of uncertain authorship. Musicologists say that it is based on the tradition of broadside ballads, and thematically it has some resemblance to the 16th century ballad The Unfortunate Rake.

According to Alan Lomax, "Rising Sun" was used as the name of a bawdy house in two traditional English songs, and it was also a name for English pubs. He further suggested that the melody might be related to a 17th-century folk song, "Lord Barnard and Little Musgrave", also known as "Matty Groves", but a survey by Bertrand Bronson showed no clear relationship between the two songs.

 Lomax proposed that the location of the house was then relocated from England to New Orleans by white southern performers. However, Vance Randolph proposed an alternative French origin, the "rising sun" referring to the decorative use of the sunburst insignia dating to the time of Louis XIV, which was brought to North America by French immigrants