Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun

Subject: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: GUEST,guest: robert
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 08:19 PM

I've been recently learning the House of the Rising Sun and would love to hear the earliest available recording. My guitar teacher suggested that I check out your web site. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance.

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: bobad
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 10:04 PM

Some history on the song here: CLICK.

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: GUEST,eric the viking
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 04:57 AM

Oddly enough on Monday night, Alan Price ex Animals (who made the song as famous as it is) was on BBC radio 2 and the whole interview can be found on BBC i-player.He was saying the song was originally English. 16 th Century about a brothel in London. It was then taken across to the states. There is was transformed to the present song about a brothel in St Louis or San Francisco.<http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=alan%20priceP> It was common to have suns on houses as a reminder of pagan days he said.

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 05:44 AM

The old sun signs still seen in London were usually insurance symbols. Once upon a time the principal fire engine services were run by insurance companies, and they would of course only put out fires on the buildings they insured. So the buildings got plaques to put on the outside.

The Sun insurance company later became part of the Sun Alliance.

The Rising Sun also has been a pub name since the year dot. But you knew that.

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: scouse
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 05:56 AM

One of the earliest recordings I know of was by Josh White from the 40's or 50's.
As Aye,
Phil.

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: IanC
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 05:59 AM

I have a tape of Woody Guthrie and Huddie Ledbetter singing this. The tune is slightly different and the words are better than the 60s version.

It seems like off a warped 78 and probably from the 1940s.

Earliest I've heard.
:-)

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: GUEST,Mr Red
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 10:23 AM

I heard on BBC R4 plenty of references various artists singing it and earlier than 40's too. Elmore James may have been one, but Sun House certainly was one. The history in the US goes back more than 100 years, as I remember. The death reference in the song being about mercury used as a medicine to cure syphilis. Older versions have a woman as the narrator.

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: bobad
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 10:40 AM

Since it seems that not too many are going to the link I provided I will post some of it here:

"The House of the Rising Sun is one of the best-known rock songs, a landmark across many genres: American blues and folk, the British Invasion, garage rock and even punk. Its origins are complicated and contested; people still argue whether it was Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, or The Animals who ushered the song into the popular mainstream.

It probably dates to 18th-century American folk tradition but entered ethnographic fact on September 15, 1937, when folklorist Alan Lomax taped a 16-year-old miner's daughter, Georgia Turner, performing the song in Middlesborough, Kentucky. She received 117 $ for the recording.

Since then, many have rendered their own versions, from Roy Acuff (1937), Woody Guthrie (1941), Lead Belly (1948), Glenn Yarbrough (1957), to Bob Dylan (1961). The song, however, did not become a classic until 1964, when the The Animals from Newcastle, Britain made it into a number one hit.

Like many classic folk ballads, the authorship of "The House of the Rising Sun" is uncertain. Alan Lomax, author of the 1941 songbook Our Singing Country, wrote that the melody was taken from a traditional English ballad and the lyrics written by a pair of Kentuckians named Georgia Turner and Bert Martin. Other scholars have proposed different explanations, although Lomax's is generally considered most plausible.

Though 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), the original song is more likely to tell the story of a young woman, a daughter who killed her father, an alcoholic gambler who'd beaten his wife (her mother).

Therefore, the House of the rising sun is rather a jail house - from which you are the first person to see the sun rise, because of its Eastern location,in Louisiana.

The oldest known existing recording is by versatile entertainer Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster and was released in 1933. Ashley said he had learned it from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley. 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."

http://joski56.blogspot.com/2009/07/house-of-rising-sun.html

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: Arkie
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 10:49 AM

Another early recording was by the Callahan Brothers, 1934, I think, called "Rounder's Luck". I am surprised that was not in the Merlin list since the Merlin site is usually pretty thorough.

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: Michael S
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 07:20 PM

Here's a book on the song: Chasing the Rising Sun
I haven't read it.

--Michael Scully

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 07:42 PM

Shortly before Hurricane Katrina, I remember reading that archaeologists reckoned that they'd located the foundations of the original House of the Rising Sun.

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 07:49 PM

Here's a bit more (if the blue clicky works)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A12460772

Subject: RE: Origins: earliest recording of The Rising Sun
From: Stewie
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 08:51 PM

See this thread:

CLICK.

--Stewie.