Georgia Turner (1921-1969) (born Georgia Bell Turner), was an American folk singer. She is credited with an early recording of "Rising Sun Blues", produced by Alan Lomax in 1937, in Middlesboro, Kentucky. Her adaptation of this American folk classic, better known as "House Of The Rising Sun," has become the standard, the ancestor of covers by hundreds of later performers, including Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, The Animals, Joan Baez, Tracy Chapman, Muse, and even Andy Griffith. (The lyrics later published by Lomax in Our Singing Country in 1941 incorporate some lines from a version performed by Bert Martin.)

Turner married twice, eventually settled in Michigan, and gave birth to eleven children, nine of whom survived infancy. Lomax arranged for her to receive a share of songwriter's royalties for some recordings of the song, which her family remembers being quite helpful during economic hardship in the last decade of her life, before her death in 1969 from emphysema.

Georgia Turner

Turner's performance of the song was rereleased in 2003 by Rounder Records, on the Alan Lomax Popular Songbook CD.

Georgia Turner

References

Ted Anthony, Chasing The Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song, 2007

Alan Lomax, The Folk Songs of North America, in the English Language, 1960

External links

Alan Lomax's Popular Songbook

American folk singers

Folk musicians from Kentucky

1921 births

1969 deaths

Musicians from Appalachia

20th-century American singers

Singers from Kentucky

Kentucky women musicians

20th-century American women singers

Georgia Turner