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| Portrait de l'artiste en vieil ours de Greenwich Village. |
Après la très belle version de Chris Bailey, en voici une autre du classique de Brel.
Dave Van Ronk (1936-2002) a refait surface ces dernières années.
D'abord, on se souvient de l'avoir vu dans No Direction Home, l'excellent documentaire que Martin Scorcese consacra à Bob Dylan (on repense à ce passage où Van Ronk explique comment Dylan lui subtilisa The house of the rising sun qu'il venait tout juste de tirer de l'oubli ; ce qui ne fut guère profitable au talentueux harmoniciste nasillard...).
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| Le chat du film est déjà là... |
Puis en 2013 les frères Coen se basèrent sur son autobiographie pour réaliser le très chouette Inside Llewyn Davis, une satire féroce quoique tendre sur le milieu du revival folk à Greenwich Village au début des années 60.
Les Coen firent de Van Ronk, un folkeux un peu niais et sacrément poissard n'arrivant pas à percer, trimballant son guignon des rues de Manhattan jusqu'à la venteuse Chicago...
On ajoutera pour finir que le vrai Van Ronk fut membre de la libertarian league dont nous ne savons rien de plus que ce que veut bien nous en dire tata wikipedia.
Voici donc sa version d'Amsterdam, tremblée et sauvage, à l'image de celle du grand Jacques.
Certes, ce filou de Dylan a certainement piqué ses arrangements à Dave van Rock mais il s'agit en l'espèce d'une chanson traditionnelle chantée depuis longtemps avant l'invention de l'enregistrement.
RépondreSupprimerEn témoigne cette réjouissante version de Leadbelly :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK54Qwj1S7Q
Yep, la version la plus ancienne enregistrée ici.
RépondreSupprimerSinon je renvoie à la page de Aunt Wiki, extraits :
Like many classic folk ballads, the authorship of "The House of the Rising Sun" is uncertain. Musicologists say that it is based on the tradition of broadside ballads such as The Unfortunate Rake of the 18th century and that English emigrants took the song to America where it was adapted to its later New Orleans setting.[citation needed][dubious – discuss] There is also a mentioning of a house-like pub called the "Rising Sun" in the classic "Black Beauty" tale, which was set in London, England and was published in 1877 which may or may not have influenced the song's title.
Sur les travaux de Lomax :
On an expedition with his wife to eastern Kentucky, Lomax set up his recording equipment in Middlesborough, Kentucky, in the house of a singer and activist named 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.[1] 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,[1] with reference to Martin's version. According to his later writing, the melody bears similarities to the traditional English ballad, "Matty Groves"
extrait de l'autobiographie de Van Ronk :
I had learned it sometime in the 1950s, from a recording by Hally Wood, the Texas singer and collector, who had got it from an Alan Lomax field recording by a Kentucky woman named Georgia Turner. I put a different spin on it by altering the chords and using a bass line that descended in half steps—a common enough progression in jazz, but unusual among folksingers. By the early 1960s, the song had become one of my signature pieces, and I could hardly get off the stage without doing it.