The most successful commercial version, recorded in 1964 by the British rock band the Animals, was a number one hit on the UK Singles Chart and in the US and Canada.

[5] 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.

[14] The lyrics of that version begin:[14][15] 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.

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 lyrics of that version begin:[19] 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).

[16] Lomax recorded two other different versions in Eastern Kentucky in 1937, both of which can be heard online: one sung by Dawson Henson[20] and another by Bert Martin.

[23] Dillard Chandler of Madison County, North Carolina, sang a variant of the song beginning "There was a sport in New Orleans".

[25] Ted Anthony in his research on the song noted a lyrical similarity to versions of an old tune called The Rambling Cowboy.

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.

I put a different spin on it by altering the chords and using a bass line that descended in half steps—a common enough progression in jazz, but unusual among folksingers.

[30]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 song was recorded in just one take on May 18, 1964,[36][37] and it starts with a now-famous electric guitar A minor chord arpeggio by Hilton Valentine.

[38] The performance takes off with Burdon's lead vocal, which has been variously described as "howling",[2] "soulful",[39] and as "...deep and gravelly as the north-east English coal town of Newcastle that spawned him".

"[40] 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.

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.

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.

[48] Dave Marsh described the Animals' take on "The House of the Rising Sun" as "the first folk-rock hit", sounding "as if they'd connected the ancient tune to a live wire".

[2] Writer Ralph McLean of the BBC agreed that it was "arguably the first folk rock tune" and "a revolutionary single", after which "the face of modern music was changed forever.

In 1969, the Detroit band Frijid Pink recorded a psychedelic version of "House of the Rising Sun", which became an international hit in 1970.

The certification of the Frijid Pink single "House of the Rising Sun" as a gold record for domestic sales of one million units was reported in the issue of Billboard dated May 30, 1970.

Like Miller's earlier country hit, Parton's remake returns the song to its original lyric of being about a fallen woman.

Colombian band Los Speakers covered the song under the title "La Casa del Sol Naciente", in their 1965 album of the same name.

[112] Another one that gained international recognition was created for the soundtrack of Wolfenstein: The New Order in 2014, interpreting the song with Volksmusik instrumentation, fitting the alternate future theme of the game in which Nazi Germany won World War II, as part of a collection of 'adapted' pop hits.

[113][114] Famous Yugoslav singer Miodrag "Miki" Jevremović covered the song and included it in his 1964 EP "18 Žutih Ruža" (eng.

Therefore, the House of the Rising Sun may be a jailhouse, from which one would be the first person to see the sunrise (an idea supported by the lyric mentioning "a ball and chain", though that phrase has been slang for marital relationships for at least as long as the song has been in print).

An excavation and document search in early 2005 found evidence that supported this claim, including an advertisement with language that may have euphemistically indicated prostitution.

[115] The second possibility was a "Rising Sun Hall" listed in late 19th-century city directories on what is now Cherokee Street, at the riverfront in the uptown Carrollton neighborhood, which seems to have been a building owned and used for meetings of a Social Aid and Pleasure Club, commonly rented out for dances and functions.

Dave Van Ronk wrote in his biography The Mayor of MacDougal Street that at one time when he was in New Orleans someone approached him with a number of old photos of the city from the turn of the century.

[33] Another guidebook, Offbeat New Orleans, asserts that the real House of the Rising Sun was at 826–830 St. Louis St. between 1862 and 1874, also purportedly named for Marianne LeSoleil Levant.