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Baez adapted and arranged each to suit her voice and guitar picking. Her remake of House of the Rising Sun is one of the first recordings influenced by Van Ronk’s live version. White is also credited with having written new words and music that have subsequently been popularized in the versions made by many other later artists. In August 1980, Dolly Parton released a cover of the song as the third single from her album 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs.
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Nina Simone is one of the most prolific soul singers of all time. Crowned the ‘High Priestess of Soul,’ Simone’s vocal delivery leaves people spellbound. Hypnotic, seductive, determined, mournful, vexed, and empowered are just a few ways to describe her work. Frijid Pink’s cover of House of the Rising Sun is drenched in heavy metal twang guitar.
Dolly Parton version
Their greatest hits album is packed with The Animals’ best stuff. There were only two singers that could do that and make it work so well. “House of the Rising Sun” went to #1 on both sides of the Atlantic and was the first major Folk-Rock success. The Animals were on a UK concert tour supporting Chuck Berry. For most bands, when you had a big-name artist that was to follow, you usually end up with a bit of a rocker.
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They “electrified” it, added a superb organ solo from Alan Price, and Burdon sang it first in a lower register, then took it up an octave. The whole thing was started by Hilton Valentine’s iconic guitar arpeggio beginning. Most likely, the song in its original form was a folk song from the UK. So, we shouldn’t be surprised to find references to ‘The Rising Sun.’ It is a common name for an English pub even today. Pubs of two to three hundred years ago were often “houses of ill-repute.” The song was likely carried to America by immigrants who performed it there, from whence local names and traditions became intertwined. An interview with Eric Burdon revealed that he first heard the song in a club in Newcastle, England, where it was sung by the Northumbrian folk singer Johnny Handle.
It remains, without a doubt, one of the songs that shaped the 60s and, to some extent, shaped rock music. The use of light and shade and a progressive atmospheric build was innovative. Those vocals, and the essential organ part from Alan Price, lifted this song way above anything else at the time. There are far too many versions of “House of the Rising Sun” to list them all. But, a few notable recordings are Leadbelly from 1948, Joan Baez from 1960, and Bob Dylan from 1962. Both the Joan Baez and Dylan versions were included on their first albums, which were both very folk-oriented.
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Many have sung “House of the Rising Sun” before Eric Burdon took it on with the Animals, and many will sing it in the future. Its psychological insight and philosophical meaning are all too relevant for this song to be anything but timeless. But it’s hard to imagine that anybody will ever again inhabit that doomed soul at the epicenter of the tale quite as well. The Animals didn’t write the lyrics, and they attribute the musical arrangement to Dylan’s cover.
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His young acolyte Bob Dylan largely mimicked Van Ronk’s arrangement of the song and included it on his debut album. Across the pond at around the same time, Burdon apparently heard the song from a local folk singer in England. Burdon brought it into the Animals, who electrified the song for their 1964 self-titled debut album. Hilton Valentine played the stoic arpeggiated guitar part that foundations the song, while Alan Price tore into the organ solo as if trying to free every tortured soul trapped in this sinister place.
Like Miller's earlier country hit, Parton's remake returns the song to its original lyric of being about a fallen woman. The Parton version makes it quite blunt, with a few new lyric lines that were written by Parton. Parton has occasionally performed the song live, including on her 1987–88 television show, in an episode taped in New Orleans. By the time the ’60s rolled around, the folk legend Dave Van Ronk included an intense take on “House of the Rising Sun” as a steady part of his live repertoire.
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"The House of the Rising Sun" is a traditional folk song, sometimes called "Rising Sun Blues". It tells of a person's life gone wrong in the city of New Orleans. Many versions also urge a sibling or parents and children to avoid the same fate.
One thing for certain is that the original version of “House of the Rising Sun” had nothing to do with New Orleans. The first people to sing it had probably never even heard of New Orleans. Nobody is sure who wrote “House of the Rising Sun.” But we do know that the Animals, powered by the blustery vocals of Eric Burdon, claimed it.
The remake is in the Grammy Hall Of Fame and is considered one of the most highly influential rock songs of all time. Rock critic Dave Marsh coined it as the first-ever folk-rock hit. The Animals’ cover of House of the Rising Sun feels like the song was meant for them. The lyrics belted out through singer Eric Burdon feel like an urgently delivered message. And it’s hard to say from where – we just know it’s necessary. Unfortunately, he kind of ripped it from his buddy Van Ronk.
Although there was a hotel called Rising Sun in New Orleans long ago, the link is merely conjecture. However it came to be, House of the Rising Sun has been covered and remade by several great musicians. It is interesting how Burdon didn’t perform the song for a long time after the Animals split, calling it an “embarrassment”. He has since made peace with it, however, and has revisited it on various occasions in different styles. I suppose to an extent, that will depend on whether it is a man or a woman singing it.
After hearing one of Lomax’s field recordings, Van Ronk created his musical arrangement of the tune. He shifted the chord progression by way of a descending bassline and slowed the tempo a bit too. Van Ronk’s arrangement became the bedrock for most covers since the late ’50s. Eric Burdon heard this song sung in a Northeastern folk club and brought the song to the group as a suggestion.
The first in 1962, on her live album, called Nina at the Village Gate. Simone’s second cover of House of the Rising Sun in 1967 is a glorious rendition. Seven minutes long, faster, and filled with original instrumentation, this remake can be found on Nina Sings The Blues. Keynote Records released one by Josh White in 1942, and Decca Records released one also in 1942 with music by White and the vocals performed by Libby Holman. In these variations, the narrator is a woman bemoaning her return to prostitution. Male singers made it “the ruin of many a poor boy,” which transformed the title establishment into a gambling den.
Furthermore, it seems that the song has been in existence for at least three hundred years. It has been known under a variety of names and has also switched genres. In some versions, it is about a woman who is returning to prostitution. In others, a man sings the narrative bemoaning his inability to let go of his sordid past, which includes drink, women, and gambling. So far back in time, its origins cannot be pinpointed accurately.
However, this meant that only Price received songwriter's royalties for the hit, a fact that has caused bitterness among the other band members ever since. According to Burdon, this was simply because there was insufficient room to name all five band members on the record label, and Alan Price's first name was first alphabetically. According to Valentine, he simply took Dylan's chord sequence and played it as an arpeggio. In his 1941 songbook Our Singing Country, Lomax credits the song to Georgia Turner, using Martin's extra lyrics to "complete" the song. Roy Acuff, an "early-day friend and apprentice" of Clarence Ashley's, learned it from him and recorded it as "Rising Sun" on November 3, 1938. Where words like "email," "thirsty," "Twitter" and "gangsta" first showed up in songs, and which songs popularized them.
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