The House of the Rising Sun

TTBB and piano

The first time I heard of a gay bar in New Orleans called the UpStairs Lounge was June 12, 2016, the day after a man committed a horrific mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida which killed 49 people and wounded 53 others. The macabre reason the UpStairs Lounge had been mentioned in the same article was that the fire there in 1973—an arson attack which killed 32 patrons—had been the largest mass murder of LGBT+ folks in the United States up until that point. In other words, the memory of the folks killed in 1973—largely forgotten outside of New Orleans—had been dredged up simply because more people had just been killed in a single event 43 years later almost to the day.

When I did some research into what had happened at the UpStairs Lounge, I found a heartbreaking story, and June 24, 2018 will mark the 45th anniversary of this horrible tragedy. In wanting to write something to memorialize the victims, I decided to recast the folksong, “The House of the Rising Sun.” It seemed like the perfect fit; the modern incarnation of the song takes place explicitly in New Orleans, and the House itself has always been portrayed in the lyrics of the various versions as a place where people shunned by society for some reason or another gather to be safely together.

In my version, the House of the Rising Sun is a simulacrum for the UpStairs Lounge on the night of the arson attack, and the song features specific allusions to the events of that night as well as the fact that, near the corner of the building in the French Quarter where the tragedy occurred, there is a memorial plaque embedded in the sidewalk. Their memory lingers on...

The House of the Rising Sun was written for Dr. Gerald Gurss and the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus on the occasion of their first season together. It is dedicated to the memory of the 32 people killed in the UpStairs Lounge on June 24, 1973.

The Text

By the arranger, based on the folksong

There was a house in New Orleans
They called the Rising Sun.
It’s been the ruin of many a boy
And me, I could have been one.

My sweetheart he was a barber,
And my search it seemed was done.
But he was gone forever that night
When he left for the Rising Sun.

There was a house in New Orleans
They burned it to the ground.
They razed and ruined the Sun that night
Just to bring that family down.

The preacher in the window,
A charred embrace in the hall,
A father, a son, a brother.
They set fire to them all.

There was a house in New Orleans
They called the Rising Sun.
When I think on that night, silhouettes in the fire’s light.
I wonder, “What could I have done?”

There was a house in New Orleans
Full of rakes, and lovers, and friends.
Their memory lingers on to this very day.
The rising never ends.

Performed by the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus
(Dr. Gerald Gurss, conductor).