My sis and I are constantly talking about wanting to go back to New Orleans, where I went to try out for "Jeopardy" in August 2012. I mean "constantly." When I did the online test for this year, I was disappointed to see that N'awlins wasn't on the list of possible tryout sites in case you get picked to go that far. Savannah was the nearest tryout city, and truth is I've never been there so it might be nice to see. But still...
The Animals sang about New Orleans in "House of the Rising Sun," an old blues number they re-did as a raucous apocalyptic anthem. The song came out in 1964, was in fact the band's first shot at climbing the charts like their peers the Beatles during the "British Invasion," and while I often hear people on VH1 charts shows (i.e., best of the Eighties, best of Rap, etc.) proclaim that a classic song of that genre and/or era could be a hit today if re-released, "House" really does meet that criteria for me. You've probably heard it without hearing it, it's a go-to if you want to show the Vietnam War as a morass of questionable tactics and even more questionable results. It's also just a brutal slog of a song, a fantastic fatalistic romp through the underbelly of (I guess) gambling or other such sundry criminal deeds.
The song is an old blues standard, re-arranged by the Animals but not written by them, lyrically. Bob Dylan covered it on his first album (which came out in 1962, if I recall correctly), and it's possible that the boys in the Animals heard Dylan's take and re-did it with howling electronic accompaniment (much like Jimi Hendrix did with a Dylan original, "All Along the Watchtower," later in the decade). I've never heard Dylan's take on the song. I don't know the history behind the song (there is a book about it, I've seen it in the Pendleton library but never thought about trying to check it out or see if I could find a copy for myself). Alan Price's organ-playing tells me quite a bit, as does Eric Burdon's singing. The cacophony that the song concludes in is a tremendous mood-setter, if the mood you're going for is doom.
The Animals, like the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, started out the British Invasion as cover machines, recording takes on classic blues songs that were neglected States-side and formed a definitive musical bridge between the African-American musical forefathers of blues and rock and roll and their pasty white English progeny. In time, the Animals (as indeed did the Stones and the 'Birds) grow out of their desire to simply record old standards and make standards of their own, but "House" belongs to that exciting time when a lot of great blues records were being re-done by white acts (mostly British) as a sort of pay-it-forward to the black musicians who had inspired the English bands in the first place. True, Elvis Presley was the catalyst for a lot of the English cats, but so was Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Ray Charles, and countless others, either famous then or famous now but mostly overlooked in their own country, beloved overseas but unable literally to get a cup of coffee in their own country. It's a fact that the British Invasion rescued a lot of bluesmen from obscurity, either reviving their careers or at least giving them royalty checks every time Mick or Keith Relf or Robert Plant sang a song they'd written.
Eric Burdon, like Mick and the other English white guys who loved the blues, doesn't sound like a black man. He sounds like a white guy's *idea* of a black man, especially on this song, but the pain of the lyrics is there in his voice all the same. He might not come off as a desolate bluesman bemoaning his fate (something about going back to New Orleans to seek his ball and chain, ostensibly slang for a wife and kids), but he sure does try his hardest to almost sing through the stereo and into your ear. It's a great performance, one that would have earned the Animals instant access to enshrinement in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame if they'd never recorded another song. But they did, a lot of them, and Burdon even led the mostly black, mostly American band War for a spell ("Spill the Wine" ring any bells for you). Like a lot of the English bluesmen, Burdon owes a debt to the African-Americans who inspired him, whose records came to his hometown of Newcastle (like Liverpool, a port city) courtesy of the record collections begun by sailors on commercial vessels which crossed the oceans between the UK and the USA. Those guys are the unsung heroes of the rock world, the men who brought the blues to England and helped inspire a generation of wannabe bluesmen.
I love New Orleans, even though I was only there a couple of days and (if we're being honest) saw maybe ten percent of the city. I love the Animals, whose "Greatest Hits" CD was the first I ever bought (though I had to wait months before I could listen to it, on account of not having a CD player. And I love this song, this weird bluesy number that on some level makes no sense, but doesn't have to. The soundscape the song creates is light-years ahead of 1964, and if you don't believe me seek out the song for yourself. I guarantee it will blow your mind if you've never heard it before.
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