On this day (September 5) in 1964, The Animals topped the Billboard Hot 100 with “House of the Rising Sun.” The song, an arrangement of a traditional American folk song, occupied the top spot for three consecutive weeks. It has since been hailed as a turning point in popular music and the first true folk rock song. It was also the first No. 1 of the British Invasion era not connected to The Beatles.
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The Animals started playing “The House of the Rising Sun” during an English tour with Chuck Berry in early 1964. The band worked up the arrangement and played it at the end of the show. According to Songfacts, lead singer Eric Burdon said the song was perfect for that tour. “It was a way of reaching the audience without copying Chuck Berry. It was a great trick, and it worked,” he recalled.
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The band was so sure they had something special on their hands that they scheduled studio time between tour stops to record it. They captured the song in a single take and released it as a single on June 19. It topped the UK Singles Chart on July 9 and the Hot 100 on September 5.
The Animals Released More Than a Major Hit
“The House of the Rising Sun” wasn’t just a major hit for The Animals. It was a landmark moment in pop culture. Music critic and author Dave Marsh called it the first folk-rock hit. The BBC’s Ralph McLean credited the single with forever changing the face of modern music. “It was arguably the first folk rock tune. Bob Dylan loved it so much he decided to drop the acoustic sound he was famous for and took up the electric sound for his next album, Bringing It All Back Home–pop music thus changed forever,” he wrote.
In an interview, Burdon also discussed the impact of the song on Dylan’s electric era. “Bob Dylan, who was angry at first, turned into a rocker,” he said. “Dylan went electric in the shadow of The Animals’ classic ‘House of the Rising Sun.’”
The Animals were also the first British Invasion band to score a No. 1 hit in the United States that wasn’t somehow connected to The Beatles. The Fab Four scored their first No. 1 in February 1964, and had a total of six chart-toppers when “The House of the Rising Sun” reached the summit. The only other British Invasion group to reach No. 1 on the Hot 100 before The Animals was Peter & Gordon. However, their single, “A World Without Love,” was penned by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
Early Versions of “The House of the Rising Sun”
The Animals may have recorded the most popular version of “The House of the Rising Sun,” but they were far from the first. Hundreds of artists have recorded it over the years. However, it was Appalachian folk singer Clarence Ashley who is credited with the first recording of the song. He recorded it with Gwen Foster in 1933 under the title “Rising Sun Blues.”
Music historian and folklorist Alan Lomax captured multiple versions of the song from singers in eastern Kentucky in 1937. The most notable of those was by 16-year-old Georgia Turner.
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