I found the following useful summary posted to the rec.music.folk newsgroup a few years ago by a Michael Thilo. I could not find the earlier messages by Blech and Suffet:

As I have posted a while ago Clarence Ashley said he taught 'Rising Sun Blues' aka 'House of the Rising Sun' to Roy Acuff "shortly after WW I". Now this must have happened after 1924, when Acuff graduated from high school in Knoxville and joined Dr Hauers Medicine Show" (OTM 12, 21).

Alan Lomax in The Penguin Book of American Folksongs gives these notes to the song (The Rising Sun):" A ragged Kentucky Mountain girl recorded this modern white song for me in 1937 in Middlesborough, Kentucky ... This blues song of a lost girl probably derives from some older British piece. At any rate, the house of the Rising Sun occurs in several risque English songs, and the melody is one of several for the ancient and scandalous ballad Little Musgrave". (Could this "ragged Kentucky Mountain girl" be Georgina Turner?, cf. Stephen Suffet in a previous posting).

R. Shelton has in the 'Josh-White-Songbook' (Quadrangle Books Inc. 1963) the following information:" He (i.e. J. White) learned Rising Sun from a white hillbilly singer in either Winston-Salem or High Pont, N.C. A few years ago he had to 'convince' a folklorist that he hadn't learned it from one of his books or recordings." I guess the 'folklorist' was A. Lomax. But more interesting is, that Josh White learned it from a "white hillbilly in N.C." Josh White went north to Chicago in the winter of 1924 with Blind Man Arnold (Josh White was then only ten years old) and stayed in the north except for a short interlude in his hometown Greenville, South Carolina in 1928. His only time in North Carolina was in 1923 and early 1924, when he had been leased out by Arnold to Blind Lemmon Jefferson whom he led through the major cities of N.C. , the same area Clarence Ashley toured with am medicine show since 1911. Ashley might have been the "white hillbilly singer".

Now what have we got so far?:

1905 : HoRS is said to have been known at that time by miners(?)

1923/24: Josh White learns it from a "white hillbilly singer" (C. Ashley ?)

1924/1925: Clarence Ashley teaches it to young Roy Acuff, who had just joined Dr Hauer's Medicine Show

1928: recorded by Texas Alexander (?), ca. 1928 (?) by Ashley and Foster (cf Kerry Blech in a previous posting)

1936 recorded by E. Tubb (maybe he got it from Acuff, when both where on Grand Old Opry?)

1937: A " ragged Kentucky Mountain girl" sang it to A.Lomax

1942: recorded by Josh White, copyrighted by Leeds Music Corp., N.Y.

1940ies: Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie learn it from Lomax and/or Josh White in New York City and so on into the wide, wide world of folk and pop.

All this seems to point to the medicine show / vaudeville milieu in the North Carolina- Tennessee-Kentucky area in the early years of the century as the origin of HoRS.

Texas Alexander recorded 'The Risin' Sun' on 15 November 1928 [OK 8673]

Tom Ashley and Gwen Foster recorded 'Rising Sun Blues' on 6 September 1933 - issued in February 1934 as Vocalion 02576.

Homer Callahan recorded 'Rounder's Luck' on 11 April 1935 - issued on ARC in February 1936.

Roy Acuff recorded 'Rising Sun' on 3 November 1938 - issued as Vo/OK 04909 in August 1939.

For articles by journalist, Ted Anthony, on Georgia Turner story see HERE and HERE. I have no idea of the accuracy of these articles.

For further discussion of the song put House of the Rising Sun (no quote marks) in the 'Search the Archives' link at Ballad-L site. Messages from John Garst are of particular interest. Ballad-L site.

--Stewie.