The House of The Rising Sun Tabs

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• The Animals - The House of the Rising Sun - Sheet Music (Digital Download)
  Performed by: The Animals: The House of the Rising Sun Scorch file - instantly downloadable sheet music, scoring: Guitar Tab;Guitar/Vocal, instruments: Guitar;Voice; 5 pages


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  The Ultimate Song Pages - Guitar Volume 1 Edited by Aaron Stang. Guitar tablature songbook for guitar and voice. Series: Fretted instrument mixed folio (Guitar tablature). 1090 pages. Published by Alfred Publishing. (AP.GFM0311)
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  Guitar Tab White Pages - Volume 3 Guitar tablature songbook for guitar and voice. Series: Hal Leonard Guitar Recorded Versions (Authentic note-for-note transcriptions). 1152 pages. Published by Hal Leonard. (HL.690791)
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There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one

My mother was a tailor
She sewed my new bluejeans
My father was a gamblin' man
Down in New Orleans

Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a suitcase and trunk
And the only time he's satisfied
Is when he's on a drunk

Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun

Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train
I'm goin' back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain

Well, there is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one

Origin and early versions

Like many classic folk ballads, the authorship of "The House of the Rising Sun" is uncertain. Musicologists say that it is based on the tradition of broadside ballads such as the Unfortunate Rake of the 18th century which were taken to America by early settlers. Many of these had the theme of "if only" and after a period of evolution, they emerge as American songs like the Streets of Laredo. The tradition of the blues combined with these in which the telling of a sad story has a therapeutic effect.

The oldest known existing recording is by versatile Smoky Mountain artists Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster and was made in 1933. Ashley said he had learned it from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley. Texas Alexander's The Risin' Sun, which was recorded in 1928, is sometimes mentioned as the first recording, but this is a completely different song. The Callahan Brothers recorded the song in 1934.

The song may still have to been lost to posterity until it was collected by folklorist Alan Lomax. Lomax and his father were curators of the Archive of American Folk Song for the Library of Congress from 1932. They searched the country for songs. On an expedition with his wife to eastern Kentucky Lomax set up his recording equipment in Middlesborough, Kentucky in the house of someone called Tilman Cable. On 15 Sept 1937 he recorded a performance by Georgia Turner, the 16 year-old daughter of a miner. He called it The Risin' Sun Blues. Lomax later recorded a different version sung by Bert Martin. Lomax in his seminal 1941 songbook, Our Singing Country credited the lyrics to Georgia Turner, with reference to Bert Martin's version. The melody bears similarities to a traditional English ballad, Matty Groves.

Roy Acuff, who recorded the song commercially on November 3, 1938, may have learned the song from Clarence Ashley with whom he sometimes performed. In 1941, Woody Guthrie recorded a version. In late 1948 Lead Belly recorded a version called "In New Orleans" in the sessions that later became the album Lead Belly's Last Sessions (1994, Smithsonian Folkways). In 1957 Glenn Yarbrough recorded the song for Elektra Records.

In 1962 Bob Dylan recorded the song on his first and self-titled album, Bob Dylan. In an interview on the documentary No Direction Home, Dave Van Ronk said that he was intending record it at that time, and that Bob Dylan copied his version of the song.

An interview with Eric Burdon of The Animals revealed that he first heard the song in a club in Newcastle and it was sung by a Northumbrian folk singer called Johnny Handle. The Animals were on tour with Chuck Berry and chose it because they wanted something distinctive to sing[3]. This interview refutes assertions that the inspiration for The Animals' arrangement came directly from Dylan's recording, from Josh White or Nina Simone (who recorded it before Dylan on Nina at the Village Gate). Regardless, the Animals enjoyed a huge hit with the song, much to Dylan's chagrin when his version was referred to as a cover of The Animals' version - the irony of which was not lost on Van Ronk. Dave Van Ronk went on record as saying that the whole issue was a "tempest in a teapot", and that Dylan stopped playing the song after The Animals' hit because fans accused Dylan of plagiarizing the Animals' version. Bob Dylan has said he first heard The Animals' version on his automobile radio and "jumped out of his car seat" because he liked it so much.

The Animals version

Regardless of its sources of inspiration, The Animals' take on "The House of the Rising Sun" sounded wholly new: writer Dave Marsh described it as "the first folk-rock hit," sounding "as if they'd connected the ancient tune to a live wire," while writer Ralph McLean of the BBC agreed that "it was arguably the first folk rock tune," calling it "a revolutionary single" after which "the face of modern music was changed forever."

The Animals' version transposes the narrative of the song from the point of view of a woman led into a life of degradation, to that of a male, whose father was now a gambler and drunkard, as opposed to the sweetheart in earlier versions.

The Animals had begun featuring their arrangement of "House of the Rising Sun" during a joint concert tour with Chuck Berry, using it as their closing number to differentiate themselves from acts which always closed with straight rockers. It got a tremendous reaction from the audience, convincing initially reluctant producer Mickie Most that it had hit potential, and between tour stops the group went to a small recording studio on Kingsway in London to capture it.

Recorded in just one take on 18 May 1964, it started with a famous electric guitar A minor chord arpeggio by Hilton Valentine, which inspired countless beginning guitarists. The performance took off with Eric Burdon's lead vocal, which has been variously described as "howling", "soulful", and "deep and gravelly as the north-east English coal town of Newcastle that spawned him." Finally, Alan Price's pulsating organ part completed the sound (see Vox Continental). Burdon later said, "We were looking for a song that would grab people's attention,"[11] and they succeeded: "House of the Rising Sun" was a true trans-Atlantic hit, topping both the UK pop singles chart (in July of 1964) and the U.S. pop singles chart (in September, when it became the first British Invasion number one unconnected with The Beatles[12]); it was the group's breakthrough hit in both countries and became their signature song.[13] The song was also a hit in a number of other countries.

The Animals' rendition of the song is recognized as one of the classic outputs of the British Invasion. Writer Lester Bangs labelled it "a brilliant rearrangement" and "a new standard rendition of an old standard composition." It ranked number 122 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. It is also one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. The RIAA placed it as number 240 on their Songs of the Century list. In 1999 it received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. And besides critical acclaim, it has long since become a staple of oldies and classic rock radio formats. A 2005 Five poll ranked it as Britons' fourth favourite number one song of all time.

As recorded, "House of the Rising Sun" ran four and a half minutes, regarded as far too long for a pop single at the time. Producer Most, who otherwise minimized his role on this occasion - "Everything was in the right place ... It only took 15 minutes to make so I can't take much credit for the production" - nonetheless was now a believer and declared it as a single at its full length, saying "We're in a microgroove world now, we will release it."

In the United States, though, the original single (MGM 13264) was an edited 2:58 version. The MGM Golden Circle reissue (KGC 179) featured the unedited 4:29 version, although the label shows the edited playing time of 2:58. The edited version was included on the group's 1964 U.S. debut album The Animals, while the full version was later included on their best-selling 1966 U.S. greatest hits album The Best of The Animals.

"House of the Rising Sun" was not included on any of the group's British albums. Rather, it was reissued as a single twice in subsequent decades, charting both times: to number 25 in 1972, and to number 11 in 1982.

However, the arranging credit went only to Alan Price, and not to the whole band as many have felt was deserved. 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 name was first alphabetically. However, this meant that only Price received songwriter's royalties for the hit, a fact that has caused bitterness ever since, especially with Valentine.

Frijid Pink version

The only rendition other than The Animals' to become a hit came in early 1970, when Detroit-based Frijid Pink released their take on the song. Sometimes described as done in psychedelic music style, Pink's rendition is actually more aligned with the proto-metal/proto-punk sound of fellow contemporaneous Detroit acts MC5 and The Stooges. The Frijid Pink version of the song is in 4/4 time signature rather than the usual 3/4. The performance was driven by Gary Ray Thompson's distorted guitar with fuzz and wah wah effects, set against frenetic drumming from Richard Stevers. Lead singer Kelly Green's vocal phrasing almost exactly matched Eric Burdon's. In the opinion of writer Lester Bangs, the Animals' arrangement "was later imitated almost note for note with similar worldwide success by a troupe of Michigan no-talents called Frijid Pink."

Regardless of its merits, the recording was indeed again a trans-Atlantic success, reaching number 7 on the U.S. pop singles chart and number 4 on the UK Singles Chart. It was awarded gold record status in the U.S. in May 1970 for selling a million copies. It also hit number one in a number of European countries, including West Germany and Norway. It would be Frijid Pink's only hit.

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