A little history about the song. The musicologist Alan Lomax couldn’t even pinpoint the song’s exact origin, although he found evidence that jazz musicians knew of it even before World War I. Early versions of the song had promoted the meaning that the Rising Sun was a brothel. In these variations, the narrator is a woman bemoaning her return to prostitution. Male singers made it “the ruin of many a poor boy,” which transformed the title establishment into a gambling den.
Notable covers: The Animals, Nina Simone, Leadbelly, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez.
Talk said, "That was the start of all this."
Sources: American Songwriter & Beyond the Stage Magazine
Photo courtesy of the label.