A traditional Appalachian folk and blues ballad first recorded in 1933 as 'Rising Sun Blues' by Clarence Ashley and Gwen Foster, depicting a life gone wrong in New Orleans.
On her 1960 debut album Joan Baez, she lifted an Appalachian brothel-and-tavern lament into precise guitar picking and a clear soprano. The recording preserved a rough tradition as a folk classic and set the normative reading for the 1960s folk revival.
An Appalachian song of regret was elevated by Joan Baez into a folk classic — the reference that Dylan and later The Animals would build from.