House of the Rising Son - Original Version

[ZoeRPM]

The song, House of the Rising Son, was written in 1860 to a French tune known in the 18th century in Liverpool. Does anyone know what the words were to the original version? Presumably they had nothing to do with New Orleans; that came later when the tune was taken from Liverpool to Louisiana.

[Amateur_Barbarian]

From the references at hand (in a house full of musicians), the origin is murky and disputed. It certainly came from alehouse songs in England in the late 19th century, but beyond that there are several conjectures about its origin and influences. I don’t know that you can nail it down to any specific “French tune.” I will note, as a music aficionado with a good ear who is NOT a musician, that most performances of the developed song have a bit of a “Greensleeves” aura, as I’d expect from a song set to a traditional tune. Many tunes in the troubadour and pub-sing eras were used for many different sets of lyrics.

And, of course, although male vocal versions are the most widely known, the earlier versions are from a (fallen) woman’s viewpoint.

[yabob]

@Amateur_Barbarian

From the references at hand (in a house full of musicians), the origin is murky and disputed. It certainly came from alehouse songs in England in the late 19th century, but beyond that there are several conjectures about its origin and influences. I don’t know that you can nail it down to any specific “French tune.” I will note, as a music aficionado with a good ear who is NOT a musician, that most performances of the developed song have a bit of a “Greensleeves” aura, as I’d expect from a song set to a traditional tune. Many tunes in the troubadour and pub-sing eras were used for many different sets of lyrics.

And, of course, although male vocal versions are the most widely known, the earlier versions are from a (fallen) woman’s viewpoint.

Rising SUN, of course. Way early in his career, Dylan did a cover in which he correctly sang it using lyrics like “it’s been the ruin of many a young GIRL, and I know because I’m one”. The popular male vocalist versions have always grated on me because the lyrics don’t fit. It’s permissable for male vocalists to sing first person female lyrics and vice-versa, although the gender can be changed sometimes without it being awkward. Another song that is a first person female, but you will hear sung by male vocalists is John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery” (“I am an old woman, named after my mother …”). Nobody seems compelled to change the gender in that case - perhaps because we know that a guy wrote it in the first place.

[Chronos]

Minor nitpick: It’s the Sun that’s rising, not the Son.

[engineer_comp_geek]

Moderator Action

Moving thread from General Questions to Cafe Society.

[Ludovic]

The sun also rises, but only once, for 20 minutes.

[SpoilerVirgin]

There is a whole book on the history of this song: Chasing the Rising Sun.

I started reading it, but it was a little too dense for me. It is a very scholarly book, and extremely thoroughly researched.

[Chefguy]

@Chronos

Minor nitpick: It’s the Sun that’s rising, not the Son.

Perhaps the OP thinks it’s a religious song?

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@SpoilerVirgin

I started reading it, but it was a little too dense for me. It is a very scholarly book, and extremely thoroughly researched.

Translation: you need a third eye to read the footnotes that take up half of each page.

[Measure_for_Measure]

Wiki artice: The House of the Rising Sun - Wikipedia

Traditional lyrics from Alan Lomax, still in New Orleans:
http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Traditional:House_Of_The_Rising_Sun

History

A Brief History of the "House of the Rising Sun"

I see it was a workman song for a while, sung while driving spikes into the railroad tracks.

[Backwater_Under_Duck]

@Ludovic

The sun also rises, but only once, for 20 minutes.

Not in the book I read.

[Bridget_Burke]

Dave Van Ronk discussed the song in his most excellent The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir

I had dropped that tune from my repertory around 1963, although I loved it dearly. I had learned it sometime in the 1950s, from a recording by Hally Wood, the Texas singer and collector, who had got it from an Alan Lomax field recording by a Kentucky woman named Georgia Turner. I put a different spin on it by altering the chords and using a bass line that descended in half steps—a common enough progression in jazz, but unusual among folksingers. By the early 1960s, the song had become one of my signature pieces, and I could hardly get off the stage without doing it.

Unfortunately, Bob Dylan “stole” Van Ronk’s arrangement for his first album before he could record it. Leading to a feud that petered out, although Van Ronk stopped performing the song (for years). To his glee, Dylan later dropped it because people kept asking for “that Animals song.”

There is one final footnote to that story. Like everybody else, I had always assumed that the “house” was a brothel. But a while ago I was in New Orleans to do the Jazz and Heritage Festival, and my wife Andrea and I were having a few drinks with Odetta in a gin mill in the Vieux Carré, when up comes a guy with a sheaf of old photographs—shots of the city from the turn of the century. There, along with the French Market, Lulu White’s Mahogany Hall, the Custom House, and suchlike, was a picture of a forbidding stone doorway with a carving on the lintel of a stylized rising sun.

Intrigued, I asked him, “What’s that building?”

It was the Orleans Parish women’s prison.

[Oakminster]

@Chronos

Minor nitpick: It’s the Sun that’s rising, not the Son.

Well, it’s about a bordello. I’m sure there were plenty of sons “rising” there…
(rimshot).

I’ll be here all week, folks. Try the waitresses and tip the veal.

[cwthree]

@SpoilerVirgin

There is a whole book on the history of this song: Chasing the Rising Sun.

I started reading it, but it was a little too dense for me. It is a very scholarly book, and extremely thoroughly researched.

I was trained as a musicologist. I’ll have to give it a try.