House of the Rising Sun

[CoolerKing]

I'm sure many of you have seen this. One of my favorite songs of all time, so well written (by whoever wrote it back in the dark ages!) and so well recorded. I just absolutely love how this embodies the vibe of the sixties.

Who else thinks this is the greatest song of all time?

[LouisK]

Have you heard The Blind Boys From Alabama sing Amazing Grace to this tune? Shivers!

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[CoolerKing]

Originally Posted by LouisK

Have you heard The Blind Boys From Alabama sing Amazing Grace to this tune? Shivers!

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No, but now I'll look it up!

Did you know the bassist for The Animals, Chas Chandler, went on to be a big manager, including but not limited to one James Allen Hendrix.

[CoolerKing]

Originally Posted by LouisK

Have you heard The Blind Boys From Alabama sing Amazing Grace to this tune? Shivers!

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Just to double-check can you send the link?

THx!
Matthew

[LouisK]

Did not, now I have something to look up! BTW, like many I suspect, HOTR was my first foray into fingerstyle play. Sounds great on my mahogany OM-40 Larrivee.

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[LouisK]

https://youtu.be/zE4k76VjGdY

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[ewalling]

I've always loved it too. The organ solo is one of the great solos of the era, up there with such as Jimmy Page's on Stairway and Jimi Hendrix's on Watchtower. I used to think of it as a kind of tragic-romantic celebration of abandon and hedonism - a perverse, destructive-but-beautiful glory in blowing all restraint and just ... going for it!

[catdaddy]

I was (and still am) a big fan of The Animals. HOTRS was one of their best. Greatest song of all time? Let me just say I'm happy to know you think so.

[amyFB]

Originally Posted by LouisK

Have you heard The Blind Boys From Alabama sing Amazing Grace to this tune? Shivers!

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I like to have fun sometimes and sing Amazing Grace lyrics to the theme song from Gilligan's Island. (the reverse works just as well); it is quite a perky arrangement!

[RP]

Like a lot of the music popularized during the "British Invasion," House of the Rising Sun or Rising Sun Blues, was (probably) a US song that we needed the Brits to show us how great a song it was...

"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 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. Ashley said he had learned it from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley. Roy Acuff, an "early-day friend and apprentice" of Ashley's, learned it from him and recorded it as "Rising Sun" on 3 November 1938. Several older blues recordings of songs with similar titles are unrelated, for example, "Rising Sun Blues" by Ivy Smith (1927) and "The Risin' Sun" by Texas Alexander (1928).

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 Middlesboro, Kentucky, in the house of singer and activist 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, Lomax credits the lyrics to Turner, with reference to Martin's version.

[Steve DeRosa]

Still remember the first time I heard it in the Summer of '64, sitting on the bed listening to the radio in my baseball uniform (the old heavy flannel kind) waiting for my dad to take me to the game; pulled out my then-new Double Annie, turned on my equally-new Ampeg Rocket (kept it plugged in, on a chrome portable TV stand - looked a bit like the Beatles' AC30 rigs), and nailed Hilton Valentine's opening riff tone first time out (didn't hurt that he was playing a Hi-lo'Tron Tennesseean)...

Lost the game, song stayed in my repertoire long after anyone even asked for it anymore, still pull it out on occasion - figure I'm batting .500 for the day...

[ewalling]

Interesting that the lyrics preach righteousness, obedience and self-control, yet the spirit of the Animals' rendition is a glorious celebration of doing the precise opposite!

[flaggerphil]

While I don't think it's the greatest song of all time, it was one of the first songs I learned to play back in the mid '60s and I still frequently play it.

[BrunoBlack]

I think this was the first "good" song I learned to play on the guitar. I still play it. My daughter picked it for our dance song at her wedding 15 years ago without me knowing it because she remembered me playing it all the time when she was growing up. The wedding guests thought it was a pretty funny selection, but the musicians loved it.

[JimC1702]

Check out the version by Frijid Pink from 1970, the year I graduated from high school.

https://youtu.be/BJiOAImsjVw

Jim