Traditional / Arrangement Bob Dylan / 5:18
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: November 20, 1961
Technical Team
Producer: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Famous worldwide, this ballad (according to Alan Price, organist of the Animals) probably originated in English folklore as a sixteenth-century song. Other sources mention the ballads “Matty Groves” and “The Unfortunate Rake,” dating, respectively, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During a trip to Middlesboro, Kentucky, in 1937, folklorist Alan Lomax recorded the song as sung by a sixteen-year-old girl, Georgia Turner. He called it “The Rising Sun Blues.” Then, a few years later, he recorded two Kentucky musicians’ slightly different versions, first by Bert Martin then by Daw Henson. Three years earlier, two Appalachian artists, Clarence “Tom” Ashley and Gwen Foster, recorded a similar song for the Vocalion company.
The “House of the Risin’ Sun” is a brothel or a women’s prison in New Orleans. Maybe both! Several hypotheses exist. Bob Dylan recorded it only after hearing it sung by Dave Van Ronk: “I’d never done that song before, but heard it every night because Van Ronk would do it… I thought he was really onto something with the song, so I just recorded it.”6 Van Ronk intended to record the song for his next album; he talked to Dylan, but too late: “He asked me if I would mind if… he recorded my version of ‘House of the Risin’ Sun.’… I said, ‘I’d rather you didn’t, because I’m going to record it myself soon.’ And Bobby said, ‘Uh-oh.’”6 Van Ronk was not spiteful, but because he kept it out of his repertoire initially, the public later accused him of “borrowing” Dylan’s version!12 But this did not prevent him from recording the song in 1964 at Mercury for his album Just Dave Van Ronk. In his interpretation, Bob Dylan decided not to change the original lyrics, keeping the feminine, whereas some performers use the “masculine,” including the Animals in 1964.
There are hundreds of versions of “House of the Risin’ Sun”: Woody Guthrie (1941), Leadbelly (1944 and 1948), Josh White (1947)… Some have entered the realm of legend. The recording by the Animals, which started the rhythm ’n’ blues revolution in the United Kingdom, allowed the band from Newcastle to be number 1 on the British charts in June 1964. Similarly, the very psychedelic band Frijid Pink from Detroit reached the top of the charts in several European countries (West Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom), and also in the United States and Canada, with their rendition of the song in 1970. To be noted also: Dolly Parton (1980), Eric Burdon and the Robbie Krieger Band (1990), Tracy Chapman (1990), and Muse (2010).
To strengthen the necessary tension in the song, Dylan preferred not to play harmonica but instead to rhythmically fingerpick his guitar, without frills or counterpoint. Van Ronk thought that this adaptation altered the song, and he preserved both lyrics and melody, but Bob’s harmonies are extremely effective. The Animals could have used it as the basis of their own version, although some think that it is Josh White’s version and Eric Burdon recalls the influence of Johnny Handle. However, in this song Dylan finds an ideal way to express all the emotion contained in his voice. He even misses the low string on his guitar again and again (1:40, 2:09)! The introduction has a strong resemblance to the acoustic version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by George Harrison (Beatles Anthology 3), his future friend. Of the three takes that were necessary to record the piece, the third was the best.