Sign on the Window isn't the Bob Dylan podcast you need, but it's definitely the one that you want! Each week we select a Dylan song at random, live with the song for a week (or two) and then get together to discuss. This week we travel to the house down in New Orleans they call "The House of the Risin' Sun."
We talk context (3:15), the broadside ballad (7:00), as well as versions by Josh White, Texas Alexandar, the triangle of Dave Van Ronk/Bob Dylan/The Animals, Dolly Parton and alt-J (10:00). We close talking about the house, New Orleans, and taking bets on who is the stranger (35:30).
Next episode:Next week: Open the door, Richard!
CONTEXT (3:15)
"House of the Risin' Sun" was recorded between November 20 & 22, 1961 for Bob Dylan.
Over the years, Dylan has played the song multiple times: June 1, 1960 at The Purple Onion in St. Paul, MN; at Carnegie Chapter Hall on November 4, 1961; April 12, 1963 at Eve and Mac McKenzie's home in NY; 3 times during True Confessions Tour with Petty (February 11, July 13, July 17, 1986); in Paris on Temples in Flames tour with Tom Petty (October 7, 1987); June 17, 2000 in George, WA at the Gorge Amphitheatre; and, as of recording, April 12, 2007 in Newcastle, England, where the Animals formed.
The song ranked number 122 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". It is also one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll". The RIAA ranked it number 240 on their list of "Songs of the Century". In 1999 it received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award.
"HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN" (7:00)
Was the House of the Rising Sun real?
We discuss the possibilities in the episode.
The Origins of the song
The original song 'The House of the Rising Sun' is older than New Orleans
The melody is a traditional English ballad. The oldest published version of the lyrics is that printed by Robert Winslow Gordon in 1925, in a column "Old Songs That Men Have Sung" in Adventure magazine.
There is a house in New Orleans
It’s called the Rising Sun
It’s been the ruin of many a poor girl
Great God, and I for one
Early Versions discussed
Texas Alexander first recorded "The Risin' Sun" in 1920.
Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster recorded "Rising Sun Blues" in 1933 on Vocalion.
In 1937, Lomax recorded a version by 16 year old Georgia Turner in Middlesboro, Kentucky. In his 1941 songbook Our Singing Country, Lomax credits the lyrics to Turner.
Following that there are renditions from Lead Belly; Josh White (who changed the lyrics to the popularized version — which we saw with “Stack A Lee” as well); Woody Guthrie (who alt-J said they were covering); and everyone from Roy Acuff, Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Peter Paul and Mary, and Joan Baez.
Specifically, we compared Dylan to the following:
Dave Van Ronk (1961)
This song all hinges on the Dlan/Van Ronk/The Animals triangle. Dylan told Robert Shelton,
I always knew this song, but never really knew it until Dave Van Ronk sang it.
Dylan, of course, lifted Dave's rendition, but it didn't stop him from recording it for 1964's Just Dave Van Ronk (only to be accused of stealing it from Dylan!).
Dave Van Ronk was open, as we've learned, about where he got it from:
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.
Then, one evening in 1962, I was sitting at my usual table in the back of the Kettle of Fish, and Dylan came slouching in. He had been up at the Columbia studios with John Hammond, doing his first album. He was being very mysterioso about the whole thing, and nobody I knew had been to any of the sessions except Suze, his lady. I pumped him for information, but he was vague. Everything was going fine and, "Hey, would it be okay for me to record your arrangement of 'House of the Rising Sun?'" Oh, shit. "Jeez, Bobby, I'm going into the studio to do that myself in a few weeks. Can't it wait until your next album?" A long pause. "Uh-oh." I did not like the sound of that. "What exactly do you mean, 'Uh-oh'?" "Well," he said sheepishly, "I've already recorded it."
The Animals (1964)
The Animals then took Dylan's version (via Van Ronk), updated its sound into its most iconic. Called "arguably the first folk rock tune" by BBC's Ralph McLean, Michael Gray notes:
‘House of the Rising Sun’ captured the virtues of the group’s live act on record (something that eluded many of the best of the British beat groups of the day), and was an inspired fusion of traditional folk words and rock.
It became a Number 1 record in the US and Britain — the first dual Number 1 since the Beatles in 1962.
In Chasing the Rising Sun, Ted Anthony relates an account from John Steel in his book on the Animals, Animal Tracks, where he claims Dylan told him this personally:
He said he was driving along in his car and (the Animals 'Rising Sun') came on over the radio and he pulled the car over and stopped and listened to it and he jumped out of the car and be banged on the bonnet. That gave him the connection — he could go electric.
The Animals also transitioned the narrative's point of view.
Frijid Pink (1969)
Dolly Parton
Five Finger Death Punch
International: Johnny Hallyday (French) and Los Speakers (Colombian)
alt-J
alt-J's version added some new lyrics:
*It's a happy happy happy happy fun day day
Like a bird flying over forest fire My father feels the heat beneath his wings And in debt he leaves for another town Where he gambles and, drunk, he still drinks*
My mother hides from pleasure
And thinks of Father on her knees
Lifted in the arms of God
Away from New Orleans
SONG ITSELF (35:30)
We love Dylan's version, perhaps more than Van Ronk's. Kelly gives props to maintaining the point of view which the Animals change with more success, but at cost. We talked about "on a drunk," the baby sister, the "ball and chain," the murderous implications of the narrator returning to the House of the Risin' Sun.
DOES IT WORK TODAY?
Pamela D. Arceneaux, a research librarian at the Williams Research Center in New Orleans, doesn't necessarily believe the Risin' Sun was a real place:
I have made a study of the history of prostitution in New Orleans and have often confronted the perennial question, 'Where is the House of the Rising Sun?' without finding a satisfactory answer. Although it is generally assumed that the singer is referring to a brothel, there is actually nothing in the lyrics that indicate that the 'house' is a brothel. Many knowledgeable persons have conjectured that a better case can be made for either a gambling hall or a prison; however, to paraphrase Freud: sometimes lyrics are just lyrics.
Even if the premise may be a fictional, it doesn't lack in style. The song has lasted many years and will surely continue to persist in the imagination. Like the trajectory of "Stagger Lee," alt-J shows that new spins can be placed upon old songs.
THE EPISODE’S BOOKLET & PLAYLIST
RECOMMENDATIONS (44:00)
Kelly recommends Queer Eye on Netflix and Shrill on Hulu. She was listening to Schlomo The End and recounted seeing Laura Jane Grace/Mercy Union/Control Top at Doug Fir.
The week was dominated by La Dispute's newest record PANORAMA. He supplemented that with Bouncing Souls Crucial Moments EP, American Football LP3, Andrew Bird's My Finest Work Yet and Jenny Lewis's great On the Line.
ENDINGS (53:00)
429 songs left. Kelly guessed #19 — "Million Miles" off Time Out of Mind. Wrong again. It's #418 — "Open the Door, Homer" from The Basement Tapes.
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