"House of the Rising Sun"

[stoutfellow]

I'm sitting here listening to Woody Guthrie's version of "House of the Rising Sun". The now-famous version, by the Animals, is put in a male voice, and speaks of the singer's father as a gambler, but Guthrie sings the original version (at least, it's the one that appears in Lomax), presented as by a woman, who complains of her boyfriend as a drunkard. It's suggested that the singer is a worker at the famous brothel, not a customer.

The song is on a five-disk collection of Guthrie, and it - the collection - is pretty interesting. I may put up a general discussion of the collection sometime.