[78-L] Robert Johnson

[neechevoneeznayou at gmail.com]

If there was even a moment of hum, would it not be possible to determine 
the correct speed (regardless of how many times the record rotated in a 
minnit)?

joe salerno

On 3/22/2014 2:14 PM, David Lennick wrote:
> That idiotic theory about Robert Johnson's records being at the wrong speed has
> surfaced again (sorry to divert the list from rock 'n' roll). I don't know who
> wrote the following but it should certainly settle the issue forever. Of course
> it won't. Repeated from Bruce Conforth's posting on Facebook.
>
> dl
>
> RE: ARE ROBERT JOHNSON'S RECORDINGS AT THE CORRECT SPEED
>
> Here's an interesting note a friend of mine just posted about the theory of
> some that Johnson's recordings are at the wrong speed
>
> "A friend of mine is the lead archive engineer for Sony: l asked him about
> this, and here's his incredibly detailed answer, which is the last word on it, imo:
>
> "This again? *sigh* Okay, first of all we have established that there was
> nothing at either recording location, Dallas or San Antonio, that was wrong
> electrically that might have caused a change in pitch. Plus, these sessions
> were separated by a period of weeks or months as well as miles. The reason I
> know that there were no electrical issues is that we ordered in a number of
> recordings of other performers from each of those days and they are in (or very
> close to) correct keys. So, that eliminates that as a possible factor. What has
> often been thrown around out there is that they decided to speed up the
> recordings to make them more energetic, ie. uptempo. If that were the case Don
> Law would have had to have decided to SLOW DOWN the recording on site or make
> changes to the pitch after the fact by making a disc-to-disc dub, changing the
> speed of the original and recording at normal speed for the dub. In the first
> case you wouldn't know your result until after the fact. Remember you have to
> plate metal masters and press before you hear the recording. I doubt they would
> have tried to playback freshly cut wax. Suppose it sounds like shit? In the
> second case we would have heard not just the surface noise of the masters we
> were playing but ALSO the surface noise from the discs they were speeding up
> and recording from. We didn't hear that. Another question would be: why would
> they decide to take the recordings of an itinerant black blues musician and
> lavish attention on them in that way? Incurring additional costs to sell in the
> "colored" market? Highly unlikely. And, yes, we have listened to the original
> metal masters for a good chunk of those recordings from both sessions. They DO
> exist. They were rediscovered around five or six years ago. So, in short, no,
> they were not sped up. People just want there to be some great mystery
> surrounding these legendary recordings. That's all."
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-- 
Joe Salerno