"The House of the Rising Sun" is an American traditional folk song, sometimes called "Rising Sun Blues". It tells of a person's life gone wrong in the city of New Orleans. Many versions also urge a sibling or parents and children to avoid the same fate. The most successful commercial version, recorded in 1964 by the English rock band The Animals, was a number one hit on the UK Singles Chart and in the US and Canada. As a traditional folk song recorded by an electric rock band, it has been described as the "first folk rock hit".
The song was first collected in Appalachia in the 1930s, but probably has its roots in traditional English folk song. It is listed as number 6393 in the Roud Folk Song Index. In June 2026, CBS News included the song in its list of the 250 essential American songs of the past 250 years.
Origin and early versions Origin Like many folk songs, "The House of the Rising Sun" is of uncertain authorship. Musicologists say that it is based on the tradition of broadside ballads, and thematically it has some resemblance to the 16th-century ballad "The Unfortunate Rake" (also cited as source material for "St. James Infirmary Blues"), yet there is no evidence suggesting that there is any direct relation. The folk song collector Alan Lomax suggested that the melody might be related to a 17th-century folk song, "Lord Barnard and Little Musgrave", also known as "Matty Groves", but a survey by Bertrand Bronson showed no clear relationship between the two songs.
Traditional English Lomax also noted that "Rising Sun" was the name of a bawdy house in two traditional English songs, and a name for English pubs, and proposed that the location of the house was then relocated from England to the US by Southern performers. In 1953, Lomax met Harry Cox, an English farm labourer known for his impressive folk song repertoire, who knew a song called "She was a Rum One" (Roud 2128) with two possible opening verses, one beginning
The recording Lomax made of Harry Cox is available online. (Cox provides the alternative opening verse with the "Rising Sun" line at 1:40 in the recording.) It is considered extremely unlikely that Cox was aware of the American song. It is also lent credence by the fact that there was a pub in Lowestoft called The Rising Sun and by the fact that the town is the most easterly settlement in the UK (hence "rising sun"). Doubt has been expressed as to whether Cox's song has any connection to later versions.
France Folklorist Vance Randolph proposed an alternative origin related to France, in which the "rising sun" might refer to the sunburst insignia dating to the time of Louis XIV, which was brought to North America by French immigrants.
Earliest American versions "House of the Rising Sun" was said to have been known by American miners in 1905. The oldest published version of the lyrics is that printed by Robert Winslow Gordon in 1925, in a column titled "Old Songs That Men Have Sung" in Adventure magazine.Steve Sullivan, Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volume 1, Scarecrow Press (2013) , 9780810882966, p. 98. The lyrics of that version begin:The same opening lyrics are in the early recorded version in 1933: Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle, "House of the Rising Sun, The ", The Traditional Ballad Index, 4.0, Fresno State University, (2016) (accessed October 19, 2016) There is a house in New Orleans, it's called the Rising Sun It's been the ruin of many poor girl Great God, and I for one.
The oldest known recording of the song, under the title "Rising Sun Blues", is by Appalachian artists Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster, who recorded it on September 6, 1933, on the Vocalion label (02576). Ashley said he had learned it from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley, who got married around the time of the Civil War, which suggests that the song could have been written years before the start of the 20th century. Roy Acuff, an "early-day friend and apprentice" of Clarence Ashley's, learned it from him and recorded it as "Rising Sun" on November 3, 1938.
The narrative of the lyrics has varied between male and female narrators. The earliest known printed version from Gordon's column is about a woman's warning. The earliest known recording of the song by Ashley is about a rounder, a male character. The lyrics of that version begin:
There is a house in New Orleans They call the Rising Sun Where many poor boys to destruction has gone And me, oh God, are one.On an expedition with his wife to eastern Kentucky, the folklorist Alan Lomax set up his recording equipment in Middlesboro, in the house of the singer and activist Tillman Cadle (husband of Mary Elizabeth Barnicle). There, he recorded a performance by Georgia Turner, the 16-year-old daughter of a local miner. He called it "The Rising Sun Blues". Lomax recorded two other different versions in Eastern Kentucky in 1937, both of which can be heard online: one sung by Dawson Henson and another by Bert Martin. In his 1941 songbook Our Singing Country, Lomax credits the song to Georgia Turner, using Martin's extra lyrics to "complete" the song. The Kentucky folk singer Jean Ritchie sang a different traditional version of the song to Lomax in 1949, which can be heard online courtesy of the Alan Lomax archive. Dillard Chandler of Madison County, North Carolina, sang a variant of the song beginning "There was a sport in New Orleans".
Several older blues recordings of songs with similar titles are unrelated, for example, "Rising Sun Blues" by Ivy Smith (1927), but Bluesologist for Texas music Coy Prather has argued that "The Risin' Sun" by Texas Alexander (1928) is an early blues version of the hillbilly song.Texas Music magazine Fall, 2016.
Ted Anthony in his research on the song noted a lyrical similarity to versions of an old tune called The Rambling Cowboy.
Early commercial folk and blues releases
In 1941, Woody Guthrie recorded a version. Keynote Records released one by Josh White in 1942, and Decca Records released one also in 1942 with guitar by White and the vocals performed by Libby Holman. Lead Belly recorded two versions of the song, in February 1944 and in October 1948, called "In New Orleans" and "The House of the Rising Sun", respectively; the latter was recorded in sessions that were later used on the album Lead Belly's Last Sessions (1953, Smithsonian Folkways). White and Lead Belly both seem to have learned the song from Alan Lomax.
In 1957, Glenn Yarbrough recorded the song for Elektra Records. The song is also credited to Ronnie Gilbert on an album by the Weavers released in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Pete Seeger released a version on Folkways Records in 1958, which was re-released by Smithsonian Folkways in 2009. Andy Griffith recorded the song on his 1959 album Andy Griffith Shouts the Blues and Old Timey Songs. The same year, a version by Judy Collins is released on the compilation Folk Song Festival at Exodus. In 1960, Miriam Makeba recorded the song on her eponymous RCA album.
Joan Baez recorded it in 1960 on her eponymous debut album; she frequently performed the song in concert throughout her career. Nina Simone recorded her first version for the live album Nina at the Village Gate in 1962. Simone later covered the song again on her 1967 studio album Nina Simone Sings the Blues. Tim Hardin sang it on This is Tim Hardin, recorded in 1964 but not released until 1967. The Chambers Brothers recorded a version on Feelin' the Blues, released on Vault Records (1970).
Van Ronk arrangement In late 1961, Bob Dylan recorded the song for his debut album, released in March 1962. That release had no songwriting credit, but the liner notes indicate that Dylan learned this version of the song from Dave Van Ronk. In an interview for the documentary No Direction Home, Van Ronk said that he was intending to record the song and that Dylan copied his version. Van Ronk recorded it soon thereafter for the album Just Dave Van Ronk.
The Animals' version
An interview with Eric Burdon revealed that he first heard the song in a club in Newcastle, England, where it was sung by the Northumbrian folk singer Johnny Handle. The Animals were on tour with Chuck Berry and chose it because they wanted something distinctive to sing.
The Animals had begun featuring their arrangement of "The House of the Rising Sun" during a joint concert tour with Chuck Berry, using it as their closing number to differentiate themselves from acts that always closed with straight rockers.Eric Burdon, I Used to Be an Animal, but I'm All Right Now, Faber and Faber, 1986, pp. 60-62. It elicited 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, De Lane Lea Studios on Kingsway in London to capture it. The song was first performed in a concert in Bellingham Town Hall, in Northumberland.
Recording and releases The song was recorded in just one take on May 18, 1964,Ray Marshall, "The rise of supergroup", Newcastle Evening Chronicle, August 17, 2005. Accessed May 5, 2007. and it starts with a now-famous electric guitar A minor chord arpeggio by Hilton Valentine. According to Valentine, he simply took Dylan's chord sequence and played it as an arpeggio. The performance takes off with Burdon's lead vocal, which has been variously described as "howling", "soulful", and as "...deep and gravelly as the north-east English city of Newcastle that spawned him". Finally, Alan Price's pulsating organ part (played on a Vox Continental) completes the sound. Burdon later said, "We were looking for a song that would grab people's attention."
As recorded, "The 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 initially did not really want to record the song at all, said that 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."Jon Kutner, Spencer Leigh, 1000 UK Number One Hits, Omnibus Press, 2005. He was nonetheless now a believer and declared it a single at its full length, saying "We're in a microgroove world now, we will release it."
In the US, the original single (MGM 13264) was a 2:58 version. The MGM Golden Circle reissue (KGC 179) featured the unedited 4:29 version, although the record label gives the edited playing time of 2:58. The edited version was included on the group's 1964 US debut album The Animals, while the full version was later included on their best-selling 1966 US greatest hits album, The Best of the Animals. The first American album release of the full version was on a 1965 compilation entitled Mickie Most Presents British Go-Go (MGM SE-4306), the cover of which, under the listing of "House of the Rising Sun", described it as the "Original uncut version". Americans could also hear the complete version in the movie Go Go Mania in the spring of 1965.
Cash Box described the US single version as "a haunting, beat-ballad updating of the famed folk-blues opus that the group's lead delivers in telling solo vocal fashion."
"The House of the Rising Sun" was not included on any of the group's British albums, but it was reissued as a single twice in subsequent decades, charting both times, reaching number 25 in 1972 and number 11 in 1982.