From Episode 115 of "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs," "'House of the Rising Sun' by the Animals."
I love hearing about influences that surprise me, about songs I've known very well for over half a century. Another example of that from this podcast is from Episode 113: "'Needles and Pins' by The Searchers":
[W]hat the Searchers did was to take the riff and play it simultaneously on two electric guitars, and then added reverb. They also played the first part of the song in A, rather than the key of C which DeShannon’s version starts in, which allowed the open strings to ring out more. The result came out sounding like an electric twelve-string, and soon both they and the Beatles would be regularly using twelve-string Rickenbackers to get the same sound...
That record is the root of jangle-pop and folk-rock. That combination of jangling, reverb-heavy, trebly guitars and Everly Brothers inspired harmonies is one that leads directly to the Byrds, Love, Big Star, Tom Petty, REM, the Smiths, and the Bangles, among many others. While the Beatles were overall obviously the more influential group by a long way, “Needles and Pins” has a reasonable claim to be the most influential single track from the Merseybeat era.
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There is still lots of cool, unexploited stuff in that song, in those chord progressions. I worked out a guitar arrangement for it, using twists on that interwoven descending scale that I really like, but I don't play it for anybody because I figure they will just roll their eyes if I roll out that overheard old chestnut.
As a kid participating in summer league basketball, House Of The Rising Sun was played at maximum volume over the PA system. The facility had lousy acoustics with reverbs everywhere. Good times...
A "simple trick" that nobody did before, and everybody did after, is also known as an "innovation" or "creation." Faint praise should be turned up to at least 10, if not 11.
Big lesson from Dave Van Ronk is publish your arrangement before you share it with all your friends in the Village. Because other than credit for his ingenuity Van Ronk did not reap the huge financial rewards that the Animals did.
"A "simple trick" that nobody did before, and everybody did after, is also known as an "innovation" or "creation." Faint praise should be turned up to at least 10, if not 11."
I'm quoting the transcript, so I recommend listening to the episode to get the sense of the degree of admiration being expressed by the podcaster, Andrew Hickey. He is subtly expressive. It makes it very listenable.
"Because other than credit for his ingenuity Van Ronk did not reap the huge financial rewards that the Animals did."
Dylan ripped it off first, and Dylan learned it directly from Van Ronk. The Animals got it from Dylan. Then Dylan had to stop doing it because it was perceived as covering The Animals.
I don't think Van Ronk was that focused on big commercial success. From the episode on "Blowin' in the Wind," the Peter Paul and Mary version:
"Grossman had very particular ideas about what he wanted — he wanted a waifish, beautiful woman at the centre of the group, he wanted a man who brought a sense of folk authenticity, and he wanted someone who could add a comedy element to the performances, to lighten them. For the woman, he chose Mary Travers.... chosen in part because of her relative shyness.... As the authentic male folk singer, Grossman chose Peter Yarrow, who was the highest profile of the three, as he had performed as a solo artist for a number of years and had appeared on TV and at the Newport Folk Festival, though he had not yet recorded. And for the comedy element, he chose Noel Stookey, who regularly performed as a comedian around Greenwich Village.... Grossman had originally wanted Dave Van Ronk to be the low harmony singer, rather than Stookey, but Van Ronk turned him down flat, wanting no part of a Greenwich Village Kingston Trio, though he later said he sometimes looked at his bank account rather wistfully."
“…(T)hough he later said he sometimes looked at his bank account rather wistfully."
Exactly! I love that he was magnanimous and selective about joining a group. It also was a missed opportunity to be paid commensurate with his talent, which in the long run may have allowed him to create much more art. I love that Dylan overlap and have closely watched No Direction Home a few times. Interesting to me how nobody has done Dylan like Hendrix did Dylan and nobody covered “House of the Rising Sun” any way other than the arrangement Van Ronk wrote.
Van Ronk??? I heard they stole it from an obscure song by a little-known opening act for Led Zeppelin!
No mention of Sonny Bono? (My local oldies DJ told me that "N&P" was written by Sonny.)
I stopped paying much attention to rock after about the mid-70s, and have only vague memories of most of the early works discussed.
But I'm curious, how many of you knew and appreciated Big Star? I thought they stuck out in his list of influential bands.
I'm thinking of collecting my sunrise photos under the heading "Althouse of the Rising Sun."
https://folkways.si.edu/dave-van-ronk/american-folk-blues-gospel/music/article/smithsonian
van ronk speaking for hisself
Um, Ann, Skeptical Voter says "This is not a comment for posting," and you . . . post it. Twice!
Should anyone be interested in Baroque ground basses, btw, I'm here. They are not all lugubrious descending chromatic scales, you know; I've made quite a collection of ciacconas and bergamascas, which go back a century before J. S. Bach.
History... The contextual lies of Hillary Clinton and her camp
"Can Of Cheese for Hunter said...
History... The contextual lies of Hillary Clinton and her camp"
Looks like Can Of Cheese has gotten home from his protest at the Staten Island food Court. When I want detailed sophisticated political analysis Russell Brand is the first person I turn to. Then I post it in a blog about Dave Van Ronk.
“No mention of Sonny Bono? (My local oldies DJ told me that "N&P" was written by Sonny.”
He is discussed at the link. I’m just cherry picking a couple things that made an especially big impression on me.
“ Um, Ann, Skeptical Voter says "This is not a comment for posting," and you . . . post it. Twice!”
I see that now and deleted the comments.
Please don’t assume that we are moderating at the level of reading each comment and noticing special instructions. You can email me if you want to say something that’s not for a comment. Many comments go through on the strength of the commenter’s name and past participation.
When a comment is double posted, it’s because it was submitted in duplicate and we didn’t notice. If I see that, I’ll normally delete one, but, again, don’t assume we see everything. We are filtering for particular names and certain types of problems.
“ van ronk speaking for hisself ”
As the podcaster says at the link: “… I used The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk and Elijah Wald, the fascinating and funny autobiography of Dylan’s mentor in his Greenwich Village period.”
I think the research here is pretty deep.
I think the research here is pretty deep.
It sure is. This guy is smart and loves music, also humane and (by his own characterization) autistic,, besides being an experienced archivist/researcher who has been blogging almost as long and eclectically as you. Music appears to be an important access point to the emotional world or at least his personal vocabulary for it. The Mancunian accent and preternaturally mild demeanor, along with the obvious depth of appreciation, make this a joy to listen to.
In some episode he calls attention to how he’s named the podcast "a" history of rock and roll rather than "the," but he’s earning the the.
The way he says boogie is a succinct celebration of the felicity of English vowels.
One of my favorite things is to collect covers of really good songs (tip - the ones with lots of covers) and House of the Rising Sun is definitely one of those songs. I believe that there is no one way to sing a song, and the best songs have covers in almost all modern styles. (There is a cottage industry of Dylan covers and I've collected all I I like because content is king, and Dylan's songs are pure gold). For this song, I start with the versions before Van Ronk's breakthrough rework. Lead Belly did a a blues version captured on the Smithsonian Folkways Collection that illustrates the blues origins of the song. The song was sung by 1960's folk singers in another tradition with a good example being Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell. Rambling Jack Elliott did a cover of the pre-Van Ronk version that illustrates how it must have been sung almost all the time in Greenwich Village when Dylan hit town. Sad to say I don't have a Van Ronk version so I use the Dylan version. It's interesting to me to see how Dylan completed the lyrics to be faithful to the original blues lyrics. I enjoy this version for the lyrics and as perhaps the only example I know of Dylan trying to sound like a blues singer, including rumbling in the back of his throat (although he reprised this style in My Wife's Home Town in a tribute to Willie Dixon when he was in his 60's). Obviously that is not something Dylan's voice could keep up as it disappears from his performances afterwards.
I'm a huge country blues fan (much under appreciated in my opinion - Hank was essentially a blues writer and singer) and this is a song that proved irresistible to the generation after Hank. Waylon does a very good bluesy version in a live performance (I don't know if he ever recorded it). Waylon is a very under appreciated blues singer in the country tradition and is my favorite country voice in the post-Hank era.. Hank Jr. also performed the song live but substituted lyrics to personalize them, making the cover an interesting insight into Hank Jr.'s mind. Nonetheless, it gives him a chance to wail full throated which seems to be one of the draws to artists covering the song.
Since then, the song continues to attract covers. I have one in the style of Kurt Cobain from White Buffalo that is pretty good if you want to hear that style of music. But the really breakthrough version is done by Five Finger Death Punch in a heavy metal version that is killer (I'm not a heavy metal fan but I believe there is good music in every genre).
Finally, I have Nina Simone's version. Everything Nina covers is like gold to me. She is a goddess of song.
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