[78-L] Robert Johnson records claimed to be recorded 20% slow

[David Lennick]

There is just no way the ARC would issue records recorded 20% too fast, even 
for ignorant southern peasants. These people are idiots. As one comment wisely 
points out, "neither Johnny Shines, nor David 'Honeyboy' Edwards, nor Robert 
Lockwood, Jr. nor anyone else who we know heard Robert or played with Robert, 
has ever mentioned that the recordings were too fast. On the contrary, everyone 
of those folks have said, in so many words, 'Yup. That's little Robert.'"

Victor issued a recording of the Prokofiev Second Violin Concerto played by 
Heifetz which they'd accidentally recorded with the cutters set to 80RPM, 
figuring that nobody would actually notice since the music was new. I believe 
they rerecorded what had been done of the Brahms at the same session when that 
error was discovered. Even Brunswick/Vocalion, which would wait for some client 
business to come in before purchasing a new cutting stylus, wouldn't make a 
goof of this magnitude. Speed variations do occur on recording equipment, 
possibly more so on remote locations, but not through entire sessions..SOMEBODY 
would have noticed when the tests were played back.

dl

On 12/13/2010 5:19 PM, Jeff Lichtman wrote:
> When I found the following article several weeks ago I paid it little
> attention, as it seemed like a crackpot theory. The claim is that
> Robert Johnson's records were originally recorded three semitones
> slower than how they're typically played back (i.e. people have been
> playing them back about 19% too fast). Assuming that they're usually
> played at 78.26 RPM, that would mean the proper playback speed would
> be around 65.8 RPM. Here is the article, along with samples of the
> recordings slowed to the speed the author believes is correct:
>
> http://www.touched.co.uk/press/rjnote.html
>
> Now I see that this article has gotten attention from The Guardian:
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/may/27/robert-johnson-blues
>
> and something called The Daily Swarm:
>
> http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/everything-you-know-about-robert-johnson-wrong/
>
> I think the idea is nonsense. I can believe that the correct playback
> speed for Johnson's records is something other than 78.26, but I
> highly doubt that the difference is three semitones.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
>                          -        Jeff Lichtman
>                                   jeff at swazoo.com
>                                   Check out Swazoo Koolak's Web Jukebox at
>                                   http://swazoo.com/
>