Gwen Foster

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Gwen Foster, also spelled Gwin or Gwyn, was born in 1903 in Caldwell County, North Carolina. He played harmonica and guitar in old-time music, the rural folk music of the Appalachians that later became one of the roots of country. He worked in the textile mills. There he met the banjo player Dock Walsh, with whom he formed a band. Foster played in groups such as The Carolina Tar Heels and the Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers.

He owes his place in pop history mainly to a single recording. On 6 September 1933 Foster and Clarence Ashley recorded the song Rising Sun Blues for the label Vocalion. It is the oldest known recording of the song that later became known as The House of the Rising Sun. The song had lived on as a folk song for some time, and in the decades that followed it would be sung by many artists, until in 1964 it became a worldwide hit in the version by The Animals. In this way the recording by Ashley and Foster links the old folk music of the mountains with the pop music of the 1960s. Gwen Foster died in 1954 in Dallas, North Carolina.

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