This was one of the songs I heard repeatedly on pop radio when I was a kid. If you listened to much pop music in the '60s and '70s, you probably did too.YouTube Video
Some people (e. g. rock critic Lester Bangs) consider this to be among the best rock & roll songs ever recorded. I can't necessarily contradict that judgement--after all, the performance is driven and passionate. However, unlike most pop songs of the era, at a fundamental level, I didn't understand "The House of the Rising Sun." What was the House of the Rising Sun, and why would it ruin a poor boy? Why must he caution the children "not to do what I have done"? What did he do that was so terrible? My confusion about this song was not something I much dwelt upon. I didn't need to know the meaning of all songs, and certainly, as the '60s progressed, there were ever more songs written with symbolic, coded or expressionistic lyrics that would have just taken too much effort to figure out. Nonetheless, it was a revelation when, years later, I discovered that the key to understanding the song came about by changing just one word in the lyrics as Eric Burden sang them. That word is probably perfectly obvious to many of you, but back in the day, I was young, innocent and oblivious. Join me on the other side of the orange curlycue for more on this song... But First, A Word From Our Sponsor:
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"The House of the Rising Sun" is a folksong originally collected by Alan Lomax, who recorded Georgia Turner, the 16 year old daughter of a Kentucky coal miner, singing it, in 1937:
If you hadn't already known or guessed, listening to this recording makes it obvious that the word change that clarifies the song is the gender signifier. The character singing the song is a woman, so the House of the Rising Sun is "the ruin of many a poor girl" because it is a house of prostitution. The song is a prostitute's lament. When folksingers perform the song regardless of the performer's gender, they sing "girl." (Some examples: Huddie Ledbetter (aka Leadbelly); The Weavers; Nina Simone.) However, as a man singing a song bound for popular radio, Eric Burden could never have gotten away with that, and he probably wouldn't have wanted to anyway. But when the gender of the character singing the song is reversed, the song loses its profound meaning and instead becomes a riddle. Historically, for a man, ruin was defined in terms of money. You were ruined if you went bankrupt. For a woman, on the other hand, ruin was defined as loss of her virginity without the benefit of marriage. This is clearly the intended meaning of the word in this song. On switching genders, the meaning is lost, and the singer's dire situation leaves us puzzled. [I suppose one could raise the possibility that Burden may have intended the same meaning, that is, that he was a male prostitute. In the early 1960s, that notion was so far from the popular consciousness of polite society that it was ignored out of existence. All men were officially straight in those days (even Liberace), and there was simply no way a song about male prostitution would ever be recorded by a reputable record label.] I have forgotten where and when I learned the true meaning of this song. There's a small chance that it was in high school, where my very cool English teacher, Mr. Moore, included a unit on folk music, and he talked about how folksingers would sing the gender of the character in the song rather than his or her own gender. However, introducing a song about prostitution in a public high school would have been a dangerous prospect. It's more likely that I learned it after college, when I started my own exploration of folk music. In the early 1990s, when I was living in southern California, I went to see Dave van Ronk in concert at McCabe's in Santa Monica. (The main character in the Coen bother's film _Inside Llewyn Davis_ is loosely based on him.) At this concert, he performed his version of "House of the Rising Sun" (which has a story of its own--see below). The people sitting in front of me in the audience were clearly among those who were only familiar with the Animals' version of the song, and hadn't understood it's true meaning. They expressed shock and wonder at hearing the song in proper gender and van Ronk's simpler, starker performance:YouTube Video Dave van Ronk, a native of Brooklyn, lived all of his adult life in Greenwich Village, and was one of the forces behind the folk revival of the 1950s and early 60s. He was friends with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell as well as many other performers of the era. He was the one who came up with the particular chord progression for "House of the Rising Sun" as the Animals eventually recorded it. The story goes that after having worked out his arrangement for the song, he started performing it with the intention of recording it. But Bob Dylan, who had heard him perform the song, beat him to it. I'll let the characters in this tale tell the rest of the story:YouTube Video As a last note on this song, Alan Lomax saw to it that Georgia Turner, the woman who sang the first version of the song he recorded, shared in songwriter's royalties on some subsequent recordings of it, which turned out to help her family make it through some tough economic times. She never saw a cent of the royalties from the Animals' recording, however, where songwriting credit went to one band member, Alan Price. Now, on to the comments.
TOP COMMENTS June 18, 2015
Thanks to tonight's Top Comments contributors! Let us hear from YOU when you find that proficient comment.From *expatjourno*:
nuclear winter solstice on the problem of putting a woman on the 10-dollar bill. Chalk up another one for the department of unintentional irony. From *annieli*'s diary We don't swim in your fryolator, so don't leave your rat face on Mars's surface.
From *rikon snow* and *The Marti*:
Amid all the grief and outrage and sorrow over the shootings here in Charleston last night, in Hunter's excellent diary, *koosah* nails the absurdity of the claims that the shooting wasn't racially motivated. The professional victims on the right need to get a clue.
From your humble diarist:
I read many eloquent and passionate comments on the topic of yesterday's tragedy in Charleston, SC, and the associated continued outrage. I was just not able to choose a reasonable number among them. It's been a rough day.
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TOP PHOTOS June 17, 2015
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2015-06-17 Top Comments with Pictures