I listen to CBC radio on Saturday mornings as I drive around doing my food shopping at the bakeries, Italian grocery store and the local vegetable/fruit market. Last week on the advertising podcast, Terry O'Reilly relayed the story of the song "The House of the Rising Sun." And what is the story? O'Reilly says there are two stories.
The first is that Alan Price was the only name listed on the song and so was the only one to receive royalties. Being a traditional song, it had no songwriter, so it is typical to identify who arranged it for the royalties.
Mike Jefferey came in and said it was too long to put “Trad. Arranged by”… with all our names on the record. And we’ll sort the division of the money out later.” That later never came. Alan Price was the only name credited with the song. It caused him to leave the group that he had formed. I wonder how much money made that happen.
Burdon stated, “Many years later, on the ’83 Animals reunion tour, Chas Chandler called a meeting. He proposed that all the royalties from that day on be shared among the original members. Alan Price’s reaction was ‘Go **** yourself,’ or words to that effect. He got up and left. Definitely a lot of money was at stake.
The second storyTerry O'Reilly says associated with this song was that Bob Dylan heard the Burden version of the song while driving his car. He stopped the car, jumped out and hit the hood with his fist and decided at that moment to go electric.
Here's another image from the Georgia O'Keefe Gallery in Santa Fe with selective colour.
