[78-L] Robert Johnson

[David Lennick]

Yes. As long as you're sure the recording was made on 60hz (remember when we 
called that "60 cycles"?). 50 in England. Toronto was on 25 cycles till the 
early 50s.

dl

On 3/22/2014 8:58 PM, neechevoneeznayou at gmail.com wrote:
> 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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>