Chuck,
The House of the Rising Sun was one of the songs collected by John Jacob Niles for the Smithsonian Institute during his study of folk music in the 1920's and 1930's. I believe that the version he recorded was played by Leadbelly. It became Dave vanRonk's signature tune during the 1950's folk music revival when Robert Zimmerman (not yet Bob Dylan) used it to get his foot in the door at Gerties' Folk City (then the premier showcase for folk music in the Washington Circle area of New York City). Eric Burdon and the Animals recorded it several years later.
(My father was assigned to a parish in western Massachusetts in the late-1950's. When my eldest sister would get stuck babysitting me on weekends, she would take me along to the folk clubs of Boston and New York City. I remember seeing the (pre-Bob Dylan) Bobby Zimmerman being given the bum's rush when he was booed off the stage at Gerties...)