Dylan's recording of the traditional song used an arrangement he learned from Dave Van Ronk.
The words
A ruined life looks back on a house of sin in New Orleans and warns others not to follow.
The narrator looks back on a life wrecked in a notorious house in New Orleans. The verses trace how it happened, through a hard family background and a lover given to drink and gambling, and then turn outward into a warning to others, especially a younger sibling, not to make the same mistakes. It ends with the singer resigned to going back to that house for good. Dylan sings it with raw intensity over his own guitar, in an arrangement he learned from Dave Van Ronk.
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗Listen and watch
The words
A ruined life looks back on a house of sin in New Orleans and warns others not to follow.
The narrator looks back on a life wrecked in a notorious house in New Orleans. The verses trace how it happened, through a hard family background and a lover given to drink and gambling, and then turn outward into a warning to others, especially a younger sibling, not to make the same mistakes. It ends with the singer resigned to going back to that house for good. Dylan sings it with raw intensity over his own guitar, in an arrangement he learned from Dave Van Ronk.
Lyrics on bobdylan.com ↗The same year · 1962
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