The Rising Sun  
Appalachian artists, Clarence “Tom” Ashley and Gwen Foster, on September 6th, 1933,  
and was known as “Rising Sun Blues.” Ashley claimed he learned the song from his  
grandfather who was married around the time of the Civil War. The song was widely  
known among American miners in the early 1900s, and the melody is very similar to  
more popular version in 1964 by The Animals featured by Eric Burdon.  
The Version by The Animals in 1964  
Eric Burdon (born in 1941) was the lead  
singer for a group called, “The Animals”  
in the 1960s. In an interview with Eric  
Burdon, he revealed that he first heard  
the song in a club in Newcastle, England,  
where it was sung by the Northumbrian  
folk singer Johnny Handle. The Animals  
were on tour with Chuck Berry, and they  
chose it because they wanted something  
distinctive to sing.  
The lyrics were slightly different from the  
ballad that Ashley and Foster sang in  
1933. Eric’s version seemed to allude to  
a man being in a prison in New Orleans  
as part of some slavery issue.  
Photographs of Eric Burdon (from the Animals in the  
1960s, and Eric Burdon today). Made Public.  
The version of the ballad by The Animals became extremely popular, but it had a blend  
of old and new lyrics that stirred some controversy as to its meaning and to its origins.  
The version that Johnny Handle  
sang was about a young girl in the  
mid to late 1800s who lived as a  
beggar in the streets of Liverpool.  
She was put into prison after killing  
her drunk father who beat her  
mother to death. Like so many in  
that time, children were often  
placed into prison, and few beggar  
girls in that time lived into their  
twenties.  
The life and times in Liverpool in  
the late 1800s through the early  
1900s was extremely harsh for both  
boys and girls of the migrants who  
flocked into Liverpool after the  
Great Famine. Children were often  
trafficked for slavery and  
prostitution. Some of the girls were  
as young as 10 years old. It wasn’t  
until the early 1900s that England  
Made Public photographs of beggar children in  
Liverpool. Lower right: 1849 and 1876.  
finally raised the age of consent to  
sixteen to try to curb child sex  
trafficking.  

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