From the recording In The Booth - Download
8. House Of The Rising Sun (Eric Burdon)
I started playing this song in 1978 when I was at the military language school in Monterey, CA - someone asked for it, and I was happy to oblige. I stopped playing it somewhere along the way until, last summer, someone asked for it again, and I scrambled to remember it all. I wondered about adding it to this disc, even after we finished recording it, because I felt that my post-surgery voice didn't allow me to give me that pitch-perfect rendition that I wanted. Then those brave souls (who regularly help me see around my blind spots) reminded me that this song didn't need to be that way at all. So, in the words of the late Rod Serling, "Presented for your consideration..."
Lyrics
There is a house in New Orleans, they call the Rising Sun,
and it's been the ruin of many a poor girl, and God I know - I'm one.
My mother was a tailor, she sewed my new blue jeans.
My father was a gambling man, down in New Orleans.
Now the only thing a gambler needs is a suitcase and a trunk,
and the only time he's ever satisfied is when he's on a drunk.
Oh mothers - tell your children, not to do what I have done,
or they'll spend their lives in sin and misery in the house of the Rising Sun.
Well there is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun,
and it's been the ruin of many a poor girl, and God I know - I'm one
...and God ... I know - I'm one