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

[Thatcher Graham]

Actually deliberately pressing a fast version has numerous historical 
precedents. Several of Fats Domino's sides were deliberately sped up. 
The book Blue Monday covered it in some detail. Though admittedly in 
this case, 3 semitones is hard to believe.

-Thatcher






On 12/13/2010 5:48 PM, Frank Scott wrote:
> The technical explanations seem very thorough and impressive particularly to
> a non musician like myself but the whole theory doesn't make sense. Johnson
> was recorded on five different dates with about seven months between the
> first batch of sessions and the second. Are we to believe that the recorder
> was running slow at all those sessions? Or are we to suppose that they did
> it deliberately to make Johnson's recordings sound more exciting?
>
> And of course there were the people who knew Robert well like Son House,
> Johnny Shines and Robert Lockwood who never claimed that the records seemed
> too fast to them.
>
> It's an intriguing idea that has been discussed at lengths on the blues
> lists and the consensus amongst most of the blues scholars on those lists,
> some of whom are accomplished musicians, is that the theory doesn't hold
> water.
>
> Frank
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: 78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com [mailto:78-l-
>> bounces at klickitat.78online.com] On Behalf Of Jeff Lichtman
>> Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 2:19 PM
>> To: 78-l at 78online.com
>> Subject: [78-L] Robert Johnson records claimed to be recorded 20% slow
>>
>> 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/
>>
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