Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 06 Jul 04 - 06:40 AM Number 62 in Vance Randolph's Roll Me in Your Arms "Unprintable" Ozark Folksongs and Folklore, Volume 1 (Folksongs and Music) G. Legman editor, University of Arkansas Press 1992, p 250-253.
THE HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN
Slow Blues
There (Em) is a (B7) in New Or (B7) leans
Go tell my little sister,
A. Sung by Miss G.M., of Salt Lake City, Utah, for G. Legman, at La Jolla, California, October 1964. The singer, who was nineteen years old, and a Mormon, said that she had learned the song "from other college girls" at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she had just spent a semester and suffered a heart-breaking love experience. Se other of this girl's songs, and the notes concerning than, At Nos. 61, "Poor Lil", No 75 "Left Me with Child"; and No 174, "Chippy on the Rooftop," all of these songs heavily imprinted with her personal misery and superb singing. She refused to sing any more of "The House of the Rising Sun" after the first two stanzas, as above, and claimed she didn't know the rest. Compare version B here, giving the complete text of this lacerating (Answer to original thread question here) "white blues," as sung by another young woman.
This song was apparently firs taken down by Alan Lomax "in 1937, from the singing of a thin pretty, yellow-headed miner's daughter," named Georgia Turner, in Middleborough, Kentucky, and was printed by him in Our Singing Country (1941) p. 369, reprinted in his Folk Songs of North America (1960) pp 280 and 290, No. 151, as "The Rising Sun Blues," omitting the title-word "House" to avoid any such direct reference to prostitution, the whole subject of the song! He give two variant melodies neither of which is the same as the present version, which has fewer of the highly emotional leaps swoops, and slurs of Lomax's first tune, probably typifying the original singer's intense rendition. He observes that his tune is related to that of Child Ballad No. 81, known in America as "Little Mathy Groves," or "Lord Daniel," and that a related song, not identified, was "found in Suffolk, England, by Peter Kennedy," (See: Brown, vol 11, p. 101, and Bronson No 81.)
Almost facing the point, Lomax adds, p. 280: "The story, which concerns the sordid path that poverty has forced many country girls to follow, may date back to pre-Civil War days; country boys and girls landed there, after rafting all the way down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers." Mark Twain, for example. It is remarkable, but a fact, that at a date so late as 1960, and aware media-personality like Alan Lomax could publish a warning song like this against prostitution, leaving the entire subject and meaning of the song – which also give no details whatsoever, except as to a drunkard who want to "igt on a great big drunk" – to be divined by strictly "non-verbal communication" and the only key-words ventured or dropped: "ruin" "sordid" and especially "House," this being short for whorehouse, bawdy-house, or house of prostitution. However, he also omits even this over-significant word "house" from the title, calling it "The Rising Sun Blues," which suggests and entirely different subject, perhaps connected with the literal rising sun as marking the beginning of the working day.
The great Negro singer Josh White popularized Lomax's avowed "adaptation" of this song on phonograph records and in nightclub performances all over the United States during the 1950's and this was very probably the ultimate the source of the present singer's oral knowledge of the song, at second hand "from other college girls." Another college girl, later, who learned the song directly from the Josh White record, to the degree even of imitating his Southern pronunciation in singing it, stated that she was moved by the profound emotionalism of the tune and song's intense warning against amateur prostitution, to which she to had been unexpectedly exposed on arriving in New York with her California master's degree, at the age of twenty-one, to find a job. (Compare the opening scene of John Cleland's Fanny Hill: The Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, London, 1749 Oxford University Press bicentennial edition- their first – 1985, excellently edited by Peter Sabor.) Those river rafts arriving before the Civil War, to furnish the whorehouses of N'Orleans and London, with naïve country girls, are now mammoth busses and economy jet-plane flight arriving in Los Angeles and New York. "Go tell my little sister…"
B. Sung for G. Legman in Paris, 1956 by Miss Rachel Carle, a young American college woman on here "Junior year abroad" from a western women's college, to her own guital accompaniment. As to the final "find my child beneath that Rising Sun" the singer said she believed that meant the girl's baby had been aborted and thrown into the outhouse privy of the brothel, or prison:
The is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun,
My mother she is honest, she sews on new blue jeans,
He took me from my mother's home, he dragged me in the slime,
Go tell my baby sister; Don't do what I have done,
It's one foot on the platform, the other on the train,
I'm going back to New Orleans, my time is almost done
C. Note that in all three following Ozark version of this song, the protagonist is a wayward boy who has been "lead to hell's eternal brink," meaning infected with a venereal disease (or "worse": see endnote E below) by the prostitutes at the sign of the Rising Sun, and is not one of the girl prostitutes, as in the Lomax Kentucky version. The final warning is also therefore to the brother, not the sister. Manuscript text from a lady in Benton County, Arkansas, November 6, 1949. She heard it sung by her brother, about 1920 with sever "nasty" verses which she could not remember:
There is a house in New Orleans,
Beware the red light out in front
Shun the red light an' flowin' bowl,
Tell brother Jim at home alone
There is a house in New Orleans,
D. This fragment seems to consist of the "nasty" verses the lady offering version C "could not remember," Sung by Mr. R.S. Joplin, Missouri, March 19, 1950. He says that similar verses were sung by miners around Joplin as long ago as 1905:
There is a house in New Orleans,
They drink all day an' fuck all night
E. Sung by Mr. D.S., Fort Smith, Arkansas, February 24, 1951. She would not sing it into a tape recorder, as she said she had hear there was a law against singing songs about "bad houses";
There is a house in New Orleans,
Go fill the glasses to the brim
Aside from the powerful rendition by Josh White, mention above, issued on long-playing records in the 1950's, the song was also recorded by The Weavers on Sod-Bust Ballads (Commodore 78 rpm records) issued in 1947. This album is reviewed by Charles Seeger, in Journal of American Folklore (1948) vol. 61: pp 215-18, in a review-essay of American folksongs on records, all four albums reviewed being produced by his nephew Alan Lomax, with notes by him.
The sign itself of the "Rising Sun" probably refers to some gilt or yellow-painted version of the large sculptured or gilt wooden chrysanthemum-style circular decoration often placed as a sun-ray mirror indoors, or over the outside door of fine houses in France, and derivatively in French New Orleans (Nouvelle Orleans until the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon in 1803) during and after the reign to 1715 of Louis XIV, "le Roi Soleil" or Sun0King, whose royal insignia it was. At the folk level, Southern French farmer to this day nail a large dried sunflower over their barn or garage doors, creating a similar effect. When asked the reason for this they reply vaguely that it brings luck, or "averts misfortune." usually meaning the Devil and all his works.
It is possible that his is a survival of "sympathetic" magic, as with the rather similar bodiless but winged cherub faces sculptured on architrative decoration over doors or windows. A youngish woman member of the Surrealist anti-artistic movement in Paris, gave me the following information learned in her native Tarn, a wild mountainous area in the south of France; that in the days of the chauffeurs who were gangs of murderous hotel keepers in the Adrets mountain pass on the road from Marseilles to Cannes, and in the lumber town of Pegomas nearby, until suppress just before the French Revolution, "devil-worshippers protected by rich noblemen" would nail a sacrificed human infant child to an outdoor wall overlooking their nighttime orgies of murder and sex. Compare the singer's remark at note B above as to the aborted child being thrown into the privy under the "House of the Rising Sun," a common occurrence in medieval brothels (and reportedly nunneries) and throughout the Orient today. Compare also the chauffeur style plot of several highly popular cult horror-films in the United States throughout the 1980's. (And since…)
Grouped above, from Nos. 58, "A Dark and Rolling Eye" (the sixteenth or seventeenth-century "The Fire-Ship") through No. 62, "The House of the Rising Sun," are various songs about prostitution (female) ranging from its almost romantic pastourelie form of street or wayside seduction in the protochatey, "The Fire-Ship," with its tragic result; through the mock-humorous defiance of "Facinatin' Lady" and "Poor (Opium) Lil," to its wholly tragic aspect under "The Rising Sun." Beyond that, see the forth group of prostitution songs, all unfortunately collected without their tunes, in vol. II here, from No.s 195, "The Eleventh Street Whores," and 196 "The Whorehouse Bells," through No. 198, "St James Infirmary," also know in the American southwest as "The Streets of Laredo," both being versions of Laws, 131, the eighteenth-century admonitory broadside, "The Unfortunate Rake," in which the young man )or sometimes a young female prostitute) dies of venereal disease.
Sincerely, |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Roger the Skiffler Date: 06 Jul 04 - 09:46 AM Thanks for those different versions, Garg. It features in my collection by many folk & blues (& pop) artists but mostly versions of the Josh White/Baez/Animals verses. I'm not interested in assigning genre to it but I was surprised how many versions I seem to have! RtS |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: mooman Date: 06 Jul 04 - 10:03 AM Like Roger I'm not really interested in the "genre" and I find the blues as a subset of folk argument spurious at best. Blues derives essentially from African song and is that "folk" by many academics' definitions? I have rearranged this song and perform it with Patricia (Lady McMoo here) on vocals in a jazz style which seems to work quite well. As many have said "a good song is a good song". Peace moo |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: greg stephens Date: 06 Jul 04 - 10:34 AM Mooman: there are many weird and wonderful definitions of "folk" to be had on Mudcat, but yours seems to be a new one. Why wouldn't there be African folk music? Don't all cultures have their own folk music? |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: mooman Date: 06 Jul 04 - 10:53 AM Dear Greg, Well, African song and, indeed, the passed down indigenous music and song of many countries round the world pre-date the use of the word "folk" and the bitter and long-running debates (including those here on the 'Cat) that have tried to define exactly what "folk" is (the actual "box" of "folk" having been created at some stage in the nineteenth century by academics) by several thousands of years. Nobody really needed to define or categorize the music during that time, they just did it, and I personally think it needless to categorize it now. What if I take an ancient European song, rearrange it with a "jazzy" structure, then play it with African instruments. What "genre" am I then in? And if I do something similar with one of my own songs? By the way, I have said much the same in previous discussions here! All the best and peace, moo |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: greg stephens Date: 06 Jul 04 - 11:08 AM Well, Mooman, of course African music existed before the word "folk" was coined. Similarly, the world existed before the word "world" was invented. But the word "folk" was created, in the 19th century as you say, precisely in order to define certain kinds of African music. Given that fact, it seems pretty perverse to say that there is no African music one can call "folk". The old village band playing the old wedding tunes for a wedding in Moldova is folk. The old village band playing the old tunes for a wedding in Sierra Leone is folk. Ditto Outer Mongolia, ditto Paraguay. You can't write off a whole continent as having no folk music. |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: mooman Date: 06 Jul 04 - 11:14 AM Dear Greg, Exactly. We say "the world"...not "the world as defined by George W. Bush". So why not just "music"? Peace moo |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Backstage Manager(inactive) Date: 06 Jul 04 - 11:21 AM Like Roger I'm not really interested in the "genre" and I find the blues as a subset of folk argument spurious at best. Blues derives essentially from African song and is that "folk" by many academics' definitions? I'm sure that it's not your intention, but you give me the impression that you think of "folk music" in narrow, and perhaps, racial terms. The blues, most definitely, are derived from folk traditions. So, for that matter, is much African music. |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: greg stephens Date: 06 Jul 04 - 01:39 PM We differ, Mooman. But, as you say, peace. I think "world" is a great word to describe wgat we are all standing on. "Music" is a great word to describe all kinds of music. "Folk music" is a great phrase to describe folk music, whether in Europe, Africa or America. And probably Alpha Centauri too, for all I know: they probably need village wedding bands there too. Certainly, some kinds of music are unclassifiable. Folk music, though, is fairly easily classifiable, as are Viennese waltzes, oompah bands, vintage rock'n'roll and Gregorian chants. But, to return to "House of the Rising Sun"....... |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Once Famous Date: 06 Jul 04 - 02:11 PM To add more to this: Waylon Jennings recorded this, so it must be a country song, right? I never saw Waylon's music in the folk or blues section. |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Backstage Manager(inactive) Date: 06 Jul 04 - 02:36 PM Just to reiterate my original point in this thread, "House of the Rising Sun," is, by any academic definition, a traditional folk song. Beyond that, you're talking about the style of music -- rock, blues, country, Dixieland, old-time, etc. -- that various artists may bring to its interpretation. |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: GUEST,Betsy Date: 06 Jul 04 - 02:46 PM Its a story from beginning, middle to an end - that's almost a Ballad so I make it a moody Ballad - a Blues Ballad - you heard it here first, or has that description been used before - a Blues Ballad ?. |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 06 Jul 04 - 03:24 PM The term blues ballads has been applied to the work of a number of singers- John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Laverne Baker, Lonnie Johnson, Ethiopian blues ballads by Tezeta, B B King, etc. I am not saying the designation is or is not correct or valid- just that it is used, mostly with reference to current singers' work. |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Backstage Manager(inactive) Date: 06 Jul 04 - 03:33 PM The word "ballad" has different meanings. In a folk music context, a ballad is a song that tells a story. In a pop music context, a ballad is a slow song. I suppose that, depending on the orientation of the person using the word term, a blues ballad might mean a blues song that tells a story, or a slow blues song. When Alan Lomax labels a song as a "blues ballad," I would think he's referring to a story song. When Robert Christgau uses the same term in the Village Voice, I assume he's talking about a slow song. |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: GUEST Date: 06 Jul 04 - 04:49 PM Apologies for imagining I'd come up with an Original name / title in Blues Ballad and thankyou Q and Backstage Manager for letting me down so gently !!!!! |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Roger the Skiffler Date: 07 Jul 04 - 09:38 AM A quick look and I see I have versions by at least a dozen artists: Josh White Miller Anderson Band Leadbelly Carol Kidd Ramblin' Jack Elliott Odetta Lonnie Donegan (natch!) Mike Auldridge Animals Joan Baez George Melly Bob Dylan and "Amazing Grace" sung to the "House..." tune by the Blind Boys of Alabama. RtS |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 07 Jul 04 - 07:17 PM Betsy, are you thinking of a Moody Blues Ballad? :-) |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Terry K Date: 08 Jul 04 - 02:03 AM Just a word to those who say it doesn't matter what genre it is - Pavane's original request was because a website demanded he enter "genre" for classification purposes. So it did matter. In among the different ones I have, there is the Tracy Nelson version from the early sixties - it's a stunner, recorded before she smoothed off the raw edges. And for me it does work better sung by a woman. cheers, Terry |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 08 Jul 04 - 05:17 AM In that case, Terry, the "genre" depends on the style of the rendition of that particular version - so Pavane can take his pick... :-) |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: pavane Date: 08 Jul 04 - 06:01 AM Perhaps you could listen to it and give me your opinion then? (This is getting a bit circular!) Listen here |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: mooman Date: 08 Jul 04 - 06:26 AM Dear Pavane, Without getting once again into the definition-type discussions earlier in this thread...! I like Dawne's version. She has a very fine voice. Stylistically it doesn't seem too far from the classic Animals' version which perhaps many people might describe as modern blues or even blues-rock. I'll send you Patricia's and my version which is very different (more "jazz-blues" perhaps by usual definitions) once I've converted it to mp3 (I have an acoustic version with reso guitar and a full band version recorded in rehearsal) to see what you think. Peace and all the best moo (P.S. and we've discussed barge/longboat living which I fancy once before...do you live on that boat?) (P.P.S. Do you know whether that chap who bought my melodeon ever got on with it...?) |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: pavane Date: 08 Jul 04 - 06:38 AM I will look forward to hearing it. Thanks and see my PM |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: GUEST Date: 08 Jul 04 - 06:43 AM Why does it matter? you like it or you don't |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: greg stephens Date: 08 Jul 04 - 07:17 AM Barge/longboat Mooman? Define your genres of boat. I bet you mean narrowboat (ha ha only joking) |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: mooman Date: 08 Jul 04 - 07:18 AM Taken in good humour Greg! Peace moo |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 08 Jul 04 - 12:06 PM If the anonymous GUEST of 08 Jul 04 - 06:43 AM would have read the whole thread it would be obvious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Jack The Lad Date: 09 Jul 04 - 08:33 AM The latest and darkest and most depressing version I have heard is by Snakefarm. A kind of chanted blues version. Jack The Lad |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 11 Jul 04 - 12:36 PM The Almanack Singers did an LP in the late 40s or maybe early 50s, called Sodbuster Ballads, on which Woodie Guthrie sang this song. The implication, at least, from including it in this collection was that the song was from substantially pre-1928 or whenever. And as Guthrie sang it, it was surely no waltz. Dave Oesterreich |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 11 Jul 04 - 01:21 PM Re Guest 08 Jul 04 "Why does it matter- you like it or you don't." Succinct and to the point. Its genre depends upon the rendition and point of view. I think its a great song. I won't spend any sleepless nights worrying about its placement. People like to put things in little boxes, but some articles defy precise classification, with tentacles into more than one box. Jack the Lad, I will look for their rendition. Not a group I know. (Songs from My Funeral cd?). A long time ago in Houston I heard a club pianist sing (interpret) it, in a whiskey contralto(?) with changes of tempo, interspersed with little sometimes off-key piano runs. She changed, for a while, the whole mood of the watering hole. Don't remember her name, but I doubt that she ever cut any commercial sides. |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Amos Date: 11 Jul 04 - 02:29 PM The song is a blues song. What defines "blues" is not the popular 8 and 12 bar structures. A lot of barrel-house blues of the kind that Bessie Smith grew famoius on had very complex structures not closely related to 12 bar. There are numerous blues that use minor chord structures. So the musical pattern is not the defining characteristic, it is simply a "majority" characteristic. The chord structure is not modern either -- it is as old as Greensleeves. It is not a chord pattern often used in blues, but so what? It was surely known to the tailgaters who built the bridge to Dixieland music from the blues. It's a blues song because it wails the blues, man, in an earthy, straight-on sort of wail, like all the best blues do. A |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Rasener Date: 11 Jul 04 - 04:14 PM Quote The latest and darkest and most depressing version I have heard is by Snakefarm. A kind of chanted blues version. Jack The Lad Unquote Just had a quick listen to a snippet (10 secs) of that and it sounds intriguing. Is there a website where I could listen to a bit more? |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 11 Jul 04 - 07:45 PM Out of print, but Amazon has several used cds listed for $10 or so. I ordered one (putting my faith in Jack the Lad). |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Stewie Date: 11 Jul 04 - 08:12 PM Q, I reckon you will either delight in it or hate it. Nice female vocalist and good players taking American traditional song and chucking loads of beats, samples and processing into the mix. Closer to Nick Cave or what Ani Difranco did with Utah Phillips stuff on 'The Past Didn't Go Anywhere' than to any of revival inspired folk rock groups. I bought a copy when it first came out because it was bruited by Froots magazine as one of the most important folk releases of 1999, 'taking traditional music into a new millenium'. I think I have played it twice. The fact that it is out of print seems to indicate that, for the folk world, this experiment from Mojave Desert sank like a stone. --Stewie. |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: GUEST,Wayon Jennings version Date: 06 Dec 07 - 12:27 PM Waylon did this with some different chords....on his "I don't think Hank done it this way" album way back in the 70's or so. anyone got those chords worked out? thanks, Jean |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: Mark Ross Date: 06 Dec 07 - 01:45 PM According to Van Ronk, he saw a picture of a Rising Sun carved in stone. It hung over the doorway to the women's jailhouse in NO. He also once told me that he learned the song off a recording of Hally Wood. Mark Ross |
Subject: RE: Which Genre is it? (House of the Rising Sun) From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego Date: 06 Dec 07 - 01:46 PM It's a sad story song, a cautionary tale about the evils and perils of a young girl's life in a New Orleans brothel. Since that city had (has?)more than its share of those establishments, it probably resonated with a number of young, poor women, especially black. It is surely a folk song, with definite blues overtones, but with more of a waltz time signature. Whatever it is, I have always liked it. |
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