For a ballad of ruin and loss, there is none in the American songbook with more dark power than "House of the Rising Sun." Everybody's sung it. Everybody knows it.
It’s a song about ramblers and gamblers, lost hope and ruin in New Orleans. The Animals made it a big hit in the 1960s, but its roots go way back. Alan Lomax first heard it from the lips of a dirt-poor 16-year-old girl in Middlesboro, Kentucky in 1937. And she wasn't the first to sing it.
Now, in a new book, Ted Anthony, a Pulitzer-prize nominated journalist for the Associated Press, tracks down the song’s many incarnations through the years.
Listen to a conversation with Anthony on On Point about chasing the remarkable history of this remarkable song of ruin.
What is it about this sad, old song that’s given it such wide appeal? Have you pictured yourself in the House of the Rising Sun?
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 1