Song 592: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on House of the Rising Sun by The Animals, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this mover got everyone's attention at the end of the summer after the Fab Four rocked my world, I didn't get to hear it. My religious parents and grandparents did not approve of The Devil's Music, so I couldn't listen to RnR in their presence, and over the coming years, I found other ways to tune in on the rocking gems. I actually first got to hear this hit during my junior HS year, when another student brought the 45 to my French class, and the teacher gave it a spin. I really liked what I heard, and a couple of years later, as I started becoming a major Dylan fan, I began to learn the story behind the disc. The song had evolved over many generations through various folk channels, and prominent folkies like Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, the Weavers, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez had all done recordings of it. Then Bob Dylan basically grabbed Dave Van Ronk's arrangement of it, putting it on his own premier LP. The Animals got a lot of audience notice when they started rocking that chord sequence, and when they captured a studio version of it in just one take, the single soon rose to the top once it got released. I learned the chord pattern a while before I found out it came from Van Ronk, and I even used part of it, in a different key, as the foundational sequence for a sparkler I wrote soon after I turned 18 called The Wanderer (and you can find a lyric video of that by clicking on the title). Back then, I did feel like I had one foot on the platform and the other foot on the train, and I have felt that way other times as well, but I never had to wear that ball and chain.
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