History of pervasive folk song goes beyond time and borders

"Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song"

by Ted Anthony

Simon & Schuster, 320 pp., $26

"There is a house in New Orleans

They call the Rising Sun ... "

Sing along, everybody. You know the words, or at least your version of them. Some songs find a place in the national psyche; "House of the Rising Sun" is certainly one of them. And like many such songs, it has had a complicated course through history.

Journalist Ted Anthony, in "Chasing the Rising Sun," traces the song back to a Kentucky miner's daughter, Georgia Turner, who sang that song into the microphone of a young folklorist, Alan Lomax, who was collecting American music. The song would be included in a 1941 landmark publication, "Our Singing Country," and then moved on, as songs do. By the end of the 1940s, it would already be an American classic.

Who would record the song? Who hasn't? Anthony tracks down hundreds of stories — from recordings by Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Josh White and finally to Brit Eric Burdon of the Animals, who created the most popular version (who can forget that spooky organ music?) in 1964. Anthony's journey takes him from the song's Appalachian home to Turner's grave in Michigan, even a bed and breakfast in New Orleans' Algiers neighborhood called the Rising Sun, and a site on Conti Street rumored to have housed the same.

As he writes in his introduction, his journey took him to unexpected places: "Before it was over I would buy nearly five hundred CDs and more than two hundred books. I would stay in dozens of cheap motels as I traversed the American landscape and put close to ten thousand miles on various vehicles. I would eat far too much fast food and fill the floors of rental-car backseats with empty Diet Coke bottles and piles of greasy plastic packaging — from Slim Jim wrappers to pork rind bags.

"I would chase the song into Southeast Asian karaoke bars, through music stores in the frigid plateaus near the China-Russia border, and across the Blue Ridge and Smoky mountains. I would ask people about it while eating raw oysters in New Orleans, smoking cheap cheroots in Nashville, and gulping down pints of obscure bitter ales in an English seashore town. The search would consume me for years. And when I asked myself why, I would always come back to one answer: It was something small that connected to something much larger — to everything really. It contained infinite chances for new knowledge, new experiences, and a fresh understanding of the world."

Should the song be sung from a woman's point of view? Or a man's? Is The Rising Sun a gambling joint, a brothel or a prison? There are as many interpretations as there are singers. What are we drawn to — its sense of warning, of regret or the possibility of ruin? Anthony's journey is a terrific witness to the strength and vitality of folk culture, to the way American music is passed down, passed on and changed in its transmission. It is also a search for personal meaning and connection to both a place and a time.

When Anthony meets Burdon in New Orleans, the singer tells him: "I don't have the rights to it. Nobody has the rights to it. It belongs to the world."

And nothing may prove that more than the subsequent story:

"A few years back, a middle-aged British guy finds himself in Seattle with some time to kill. He is staying at a place called the Black Angus Motel and one evening he is walking over to the adjacent bar and grill for dinner. As he passes the bar door, he hears a guy singing a very competent version of 'Are You Lonesome Tonight?' He looks in and sees only the singer and the bartender; the rest of the place is empty. So the man goes in.

"Perusing the list of musical choices, the man sees 'House of the Rising Sun' on the list, and, like many before and after him, can't resist the temptation. Because the lounge is deserted, there is little risk of embarrassment. The man commandeers the microphone, cues up the song and performs it in the classic style of the Animals. After he finishes, he ambles over to the bar, where the barkeeper, who has never seen the stranger before, offers up an enthusiastic greeting.

" 'Hey, that was pretty good!' the bartender tells Eric Burdon, and gives him a free margarita."

Susan Larson is book editor for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans: slarson@timespicayune.com.