Ashley said he had learned it from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley, who got married around the time of the Civil War, which suggests that the song could have been written years before the turn of the century. The oldest known recording of the song, under the title 'Rising Sun Blues', is by Appalachian artists Clarence 'Tom' Ashley and Gwen Foster, who recorded it on September 6, 1933, on the Vocalion label (02576). There is a house in New Orleans, it's called the Rising Sun The oldest published version of the lyrics is that printed by Robert Winslow Gordon in 1925, in a column titled 'Old Songs That Men Have Sung' in Adventure magazine. 'House of Rising Sun' was said to have been known by American miners in 1905. Meanwhile, folklorist Vance Randolph proposed an alternative French origin, the 'rising sun' referring to the decorative use of the sunburst insignia dating to the time of Louis XIV, which was brought to North America by French immigrants. However, doubt has been expressed as to whether Cox's song has any connection to later versions. It is also lent credence by the fact that there was a pub in Lowestoft called The Rising Sun and by the fact that the town is the most easterly settlement in the UK (hence 'rising sun'). It is considered extremely unlikely that Cox was aware of the American song.

The recording Lomax made of Harry Cox is available online (Cox provides the alternate opening verse with the 'Rising Sun' line at 1:40 in the recording). There you'll find two old whores and my old woman is one.' 'If you go to Lowestoft, and ask for The Rising Sun, In 1953, Lomax met Harry Cox, an English farm labourer known for his impressive folk song repertoire, who knew a song called 'She was a Rum One' ( Roud 17938) with two possible opening verses, one beginning Lomax also noted that 'Rising Sun' was the name of a bawdy house in two traditional English songs, and a name for English pubs, and proposed that the location of the house was then relocated from England to the US by White Southern performers. The folk song collector Alan Lomax suggested that the melody might be related to a 17th-century folk song, 'Lord Barnard and Little Musgrave', also known as ' Matty Groves', but a survey by Bertrand Bronson showed no clear relationship between the two songs. Musicologists say that it is based on the tradition of broadside ballads, and thematically it has some resemblance to the 16th-century ballad ' The Unfortunate Rake', yet there is no evidence suggesting that there is any direct relation. Like many folk songs, 'The House of the Rising Sun' is of uncertain authorship. 7.1.3 EAV version and 'Wilbert Eckart und seine Volksmusik Stars' versions (in German).7.1.2 Los Speakers version (in Spanish).7.1.1 Johnny Hallyday version (in French).1.3 Early commercial folk and blues releases.

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