Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song

By Ted Anthony

Book Overview

Chasing the Rising Sun is the story of an American musical journey told by a prize-winning writer who traced one song in its many incarnations as it was carried across the world by some of the most famous singers of the twentieth century. Most people know the song "House of the Rising Sun" as 1960s rock by the British Invasion group the Animals, a ballad about a place in New Orleans -- a whorehouse or a prison or gambling joint that's been the ruin of many poor girls or boys. Bob Dylan did a version and Frijid Pink cut a hard-rocking rendition. But that barely scratches the surface; few songs have traveled a journey as intricate as "House of the Rising Sun." The rise of the song in this country and the launch of its world travels can be traced to Georgia Turner, a poor, sixteen-year-old daughter of a miner living in Middlesboro, Kentucky, in 1937 when the young folk-music collector Alan Lomax, on a trip collecting field recordings, captured her voice singing "The Rising Sun Blues." Lomax deposited the song in the Library of Congress and included it in the 1941 book Our Singing Country. In short order, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, and Josh White learned the song and each recorded it. From there it began to move to the planet's farthest corners. Today, hundreds of artists have recorded "House of the Rising Sun," and it can be heard in the most diverse of places -- Chinese karaoke bars, Gatorade ads, and as a ring tone on cell phones. Anthony began his search in New Orleans, where he met Eric Burdon of the Animals. He traveled to the Appalachians -- to eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina -- to scour the mountains for the song's beginnings. He found Homer Callahan, who learned it in the mountains during a corn shucking; he discovered connections to Clarence "Tom" Ashley, who traveled as a performer in a 1920s medicine show. He went to Daisy, Kentucky, to visit the family of the late high-lonesome singer Roscoe Holcomb, and finally back to Bourbon Street to see if there really was a House of the Rising Sun. He interviewed scores of singers who performed the song. Through his own journey he discovered how American traditions survived and prospered -- and how a piece of culture moves through the modern world, propelled by technology and globalization and recorded sound.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743278984
• ISBN13: 9780743278980
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.1" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Does House of the Rising Sun go all the way back to China?

For some reason, i got the impression that "Rising Sun" may be a very old song indeed. Don't remember where i read it. Must have been implied in this book?

What a Fascinating Ride!

Ted Anthony's tireless chase for one simple answer soon becomes our chase, too. He's driving the words, but we're riding shotgun, so stay awake because it's a fascinating trip narrated for our pleasure by Anthony's perceptive views of the cultural scenery. He effortlessly detours to times long gone and often to places barely on the map, and it's the rich, often-wrinkled characters we meet along the way who make all the switchbacks so worthwhile. They are the sometimes-successful, sometimes-desperate, but always-colorful folks and folk songs that in some way hitched their own rides on "House of the Rising Sun." You can almost hear Joe Brussard in his basement of old 78s. Stop just a moment to meet Paul "Frank Sumatra" Meskill. And, go ahead, shed a tear as Georgia Turner's family finally hears their mother's teen-age voice from so long ago. Don't go, tell us more. It's the details of the journey, theirs and ours, that really count, of course, and even before Anthony calls it "our song," we already know it is. Where to next?

great book!!!!!

This book "Chasing The Rising Sun: Journey Of An American Song", authored by Ted Anthony, has really moved me in a mighty way. I started playing bluegrass/folk music in 1962, when I was in college in Eastern Pennsylvania. I know it is one of the first songs I tried to learn to play after I started playing guitar, mandolin, etc. The minor sounds of it were mysterious and alluring. And when I finally got it, I was thrilled. Most of the "folkie" bands of the period had their own version of HOTRS, and I guess Joan Baez's version was my favorite. So when I saw this book I knew I wanted it, just to take me back to the "good ole days". It did that and much more. It took me on a journey with the author and his lovely wife. It took me right along with them to Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky, Southwest Virginia, New Orleans, and many other locations, in search of the song's origins and carriers. Mr. Anthony did this in a sometimes humerous, sometimes educational, and always in a way that made me want to see where we and the song were going next. I couldn't put it down, and it made me feel I was right there meeting and talking with the artists and the mountain people who sent this mysterious song on it's journey from Appalachia to the world. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves to go along with the author to discover what lies along the way.

Terrific book

At one point in "Chasing The Rising Sun", author Ted Anthony references "The Wizard of Oz". Considering the journey he himself undertakes to find the source of the song "House of the Rising Sun", the reference could not be more appropriate. Like Dorothy on her own quest for home, Mr. Anthony ranges far and wide to places he never knew existed, he encounters interesting characters along the way and he discovers that the journey has changed him as a person. "Chasing The Rising Sun" is about much more than the search for a classic song's genesis. It's about the making of modern American values and culture. It's an examination of who we are as a people and how we got here. And it's a look at how we tell our stories now and throughout our history. Sprinkled with humor, history and pathos, "Chasing The Rising Sun" not only brought Ted Anthony to new places. It just may do the same for you. Sure, "there's no place like home". But what has that home become?

An American journey

On the most basic level, this is a book about a song that all of us know. And it tells that story beautifully - of Georgia Turner, the Kentucky hill woman sang it around her house in the 1930s, of the cranky New Yorker who recorded her singing it, and of the many musicians who did their own versions. But it's also a look at how culture spreads, and one man's journey to follow that culture. It's a wonderful book. The section when the author meet's Turner's children - and plays her recording for them for the first time - is absolutely riveting.