House Of The Rising Sun

Adapted by many artists like: The Almanac Singers, The Animals, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, Tracy Chapman, Nina Simone, Muse and many others!

The "Rising Sun" occurs as the name of a bawdy house in two other traditional songs, both British in origin... The melody can be linked with one setting of "Lord Barnard and Little Musgrove"... and with other old traditional tunes.
Yet this song is, as far as I know, unique. I took it down in 1937 from the singing of a thin, pretty, yellow-headed miner's daughter [Georgia Turner] in Middlesborough, Kentucky, subsequently adapting it to the form that was popularized by Josh White...
Alan Lomax, The Folk Songs of North America, Garden City, NY, 1960. p. 280.

In the United States, The Rising Sun, a song with roots in 17th century British folk melody -- the rising sun has been a longtime symbol for brothels in British and American ballads -- circulated widely among Southern musicians, black and white. Black bluesman Texas Alexander first recorded it in 1928. [Roy] Acuff [who commercially recorded the song on Nov 3, 1938] may have learned this number from such neighboring Smoky Mountain artists as versatile entertainer Clarence Tom Ashley or the Callahan Brothers, an influential duet team of the '30s and '40s.
John R. Rumble, Liner Notes, Country & Western Classics: Roy Acuff, Time-Life Records, 1983, p. 19

All files available for download are backing tracks, it's not the original music. More info...

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