<P> There is a house in New Orleans, it's called the Rising Sun </P> <P> It's been the ruin of many a poor girl </P> <P> 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 for Vocalion Records on September 6, 1933 . Ashley said he had learned it from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley . Roy Acuff, an "early - day friend and apprentice" of Ashley's, learned it from him and recorded it as "Rising Sun" on November 3, 1938 . Several older blues recordings of songs with similar titles are unrelated, for example, "Rising Sun Blues" by Ivy Smith (1927) and "The Risin' Sun" by Texas Alexander (1928). </P> <P> The song was among those collected by folklorist Alan Lomax, who, along with his father, was a curator of the Archive of American Folk Song for the Library of Congress . On an expedition with his wife to eastern Kentucky, Lomax set up his recording equipment in Middlesboro, Kentucky, in the house of singer and activist Tilman Cadle . In 1937 he recorded a performance by Georgia Turner, the 16 - year - old daughter of a local miner . He called it The Rising Sun Blues . Lomax later recorded a different version sung by Bert Martin and a third sung by Daw Henson, both eastern Kentucky singers . In his 1941 songbook Our Singing Country, Lomax credits the lyrics to Turner, with reference to Martin's version . </P>

Who did house of the rising sun first