The Last Mystery of Robert Johnson?

[racer2c]

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/22/the-last-mystery-of.html


Robert Johnson isn't merely the best-known and most popular blues singer ever; he's the performer through whom millions of people have been introduced to the form. For most people who hear Robert Johnson the first time, it's the voice that grabs them. High-pitched, on the edge, filled with authority, lust, and fear, that voice inspired everyone from Eric Clapton and Keith Richards to generations of lesser performers and enthusiasts. There's only one problem: that voice might be a fraud.
The theory, which may have started in Japanese collector circles (it goes back at least to 2002; I'm still hunting for the original source) and has been taken up by several people in the UK, most notably John Gibbens, a poet and musician who has researched the matter and produced alternate versions of the recordings in which he slows down the existing recordings roughly 20 percent. We still hear those amazing words and that tough, doomed voice, but we hear a dramatically different Robert Johnson: his voice sounds more like the masters who preceded him (Charlie Patton, Son House) and his guitar playing, while still intricate (Johnny Shines, another outstanding bluesman who travelled with Johnson for a time, once claimed Johnson used a bizarre seven-string guitar), is more deliberate and dour. He sounds older, nastier, as if the hellhound on his trail that he sang about had caught up to him already. He sounds, in essence, like a different man. Speeding up the recordings, if it happened, changes how we hear blues and rock history. If Gibbens is right, this would change the way we hear and understand the blues. Johnson's raw, on-the-edge voice? Fake. The wild guitar runs that made thousands of aspiring guitarists' fingers bleed? Ditto.

Theories abound on why these manipulations might have occurred: It was an equipment failure, perhaps. Some say the recordings had to be sped up to fit on 78-rpm records, which, at the time, had a maximum playing time of three minutes. Others contend it was a conscious decision to make the songs more commercial.


And what comes out of the speakers? A music transformed. The sound of a man, first of all: this dark-toned voice would no longer lend credence to the youth of seventeen or eighteen that Don Law, the only person to record him, thought he might be. Now, especially in the dip of his voice at the end of a line, we can hear the follower of Son House, and the precursor of Muddy Waters. Hear him pronounce his name in ‘Kind Hearted Woman Blues’ [Example 3] – now he sounds like “Mr Johnson”, a man whose words are not half-swallowed, garbled or strangled, but clearly delivered, beautifully modulated; whose performances are not fleeting, harried or fragmented, but paced with the sense of space and drama that drew an audience in until people wept as they stood in the street around him [Example 4]]. (The wordless last lines of ‘Love in Vain’ [Example 5], in this slowed form, are the work of one of the most heartbreaking and delicate of blues singers.) This is a Steady Rolling Man, whose tempos and tonalities are much like those of other Delta bluesmen. Full-speed Johnson always struck me as a disembodied sound – befitting his wraith-like persona, the reticent, drifting youth, barely more than a boy, that Don Law spoke of: the Rimbaud of the blues [Example 6]. Johnson slowed down sounds to me like the person in the recently discovered studio portrait: a big-boned man, self-assured and worldly-wise [Example 7]. It works for me, but listen for yourself.
http://www.touched.co.uk/press/rjnote.html

[chop456]

the best-known and most popular blues singer ever

I won't say that it shouldn't be the truth, but it isn't.

[opinionated ow]

I won't say that it shouldn't be the truth, but it isn't.

I would have thought that title was B.B. King's.

[Indy]

That is interesting. Do you suppose that Eric Clapton has spent his entire career aping faked up recordings? Seriously, the effect this could have had on the evolution of Rock music is just enormous.

It seems to me that someone with serious analytical skills and the right equipment could settle this. They could surely tell if the guitar is not behaving normally in the recordings.

[racer2c]

That is interesting. Do you suppose that Eric Clapton has spent his entire career aping faked up recordings? Seriously, the effect this could have had on the evolution of Rock music is just enormous.

It seems to me that someone with serious analytical skills and the right equipment could settle this. They could surely tell if the guitar is not behaving normally in the recordings.

I too think it is absolutely fascinating to think of the impact.

As a 30+ year guitar player and having done numerous recordings in professional studios, when I heard the 'slowed down' version it was an absolute 'eureka' moment. The intonations, the string dynamics the natural acoustics all sounds real and organic. It seems to make sense that the connoisseurs also believe it better relates to Roberts mentor Son House.

[Elmo T]

As a 30+ year guitar player and having done numerous recordings in professional studios, when I heard the 'slowed down' version it was an absolute 'eureka' moment.

Not a musician by any means, but I have the Robert Johnson collection and I may one day sleep in a Holiday Inn Express.

One of the things I frequently read was that so many guitarists were unable to replicate his "style". Interesting possibility of why....

[cameraman]

Well hell. I've got some of the Robert Johnson compilations and I don't listen to them very much because they have always seemed "off" to me. They are amazing but I've never been able to put a finger on it, they just seemed to be somehow, I don't know just not right. The slowed down versions sound "right".

"Eureka moment" no kidding.

[devilmaster]

I read this somewhere before (honestly thought it was here) and its interesting to hear....

The only reason I'm doubtful, is that I haven't heard people like honeyboy edwards or robert lockewood jr chime in about it.
[edit] I know lockwood's dead now. But i first saw this years ago, when he was still alive.

There are still people alive who have heard Johnson play. They should be able to tell whether or not this idea has any merit.

[devilmaster]

Found the old thread i was talking about....

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=82482

[Don Quixote]

Thanks for that link devilmaster, very interesting.

[racer2c]

I read this somewhere before (honestly thought it was here) and its interesting to hear....

The only reason I'm doubtful, is that I haven't heard people like honeyboy edwards or robert lockewood jr chime in about it.
[edit] I know lockwood's dead now. But i first saw this years ago, when he was still alive.

There are still people alive who have heard Johnson play. They should be able to tell whether or not this idea has any merit.

I don't know how definitive a ~90 year old person who saw RB play would be in testifying if the recording were 20% sped up. ;)

It seems the leading theory is that the studio needed to speed up the recordings in order to fit them on 78rpms prints (3 minute max length). What I haven't read yet is someone who extrapolated the slower recordings to see if they run past the 3:00 minute mark.

RB's wiki entry has a paragraph on the topic. It claims that the label was notorious for adjusting recording speeds. Other recordings from that era have discernible speed issues...which is why many of them sound like chip monks singing.

From Wikipedia:

Playback issues in extant recordings

The accuracy of the pitch and speed of the extant recordings has been questioned. In The Guardian's music blog from May 2010, Jon Wilde states that "the common consensus among musicologists is that we've been listening to [Robert] Johnson at least 20% too fast;" i.e., that "the recordings were accidentally speeded up when first committed to 78 [rpm records], or else were deliberately speeded up to make them sound more exciting."[26] He does not give a source for this statement. Former Sony music executive Lawrence Cohn, who won a Grammy for the label's 1991 reissue of Johnson's works, "acknowledges there's a possibility Johnson's 1936-37 recordings were sped up, since the OKeh/Vocalion family of labels, which originally issued the material, was 'notorious' for altering the speed of its releases. 'Sometimes it was 78 rpms, sometimes it was 81 rpms,' he says. It's impossible to check the original sources, since the metal stampers used to duplicate the original 78 discs disappeared years ago."[27]

[devilmaster]

which is similar to what this guest poster at mudcat had to say:


It is well known in the recording biz and amongst "78" collectors that a very high percentage of recordings made before standardization came in around 1945, were not at 78rpm. Many companies had there own speeds, usually somewhere between 74rpm and 80rpm.

Bear in mind that in those days players would have a "Speed Control" at the side of the turntable and one could adjust it to whatever speed sounded right.

In the vinyl days, transfers from "78's" were usually made at 78rpm without bothering to check the correct speed. In more recent years however, more thought has gone into trying to get it right.

A variation of 20% is very unlikely. Up to 10% is the norm. Another reason for recordings that played too fast were that it was an easy way to fit a song lasting, say, 3.5 mins onto a 10" record that could only accomodate 3.25 mins.

Many artistes were asked to speed up their performance, but if they refused, slow down the recording blank by about 8% and problem solved.

when I first came across this 5 years ago at mudcat, the concept intrigued me, so I went into a night of research. I even went so far as to take all the tracks, and slowed them down myself using goldwave or some other similar program.

Back then, my research into it found that the issue of King of the Delta Blues Singers was around 1962. Back then, many blues artists that heard Robert play were still around. People like Son House, Johnny Shines, etc. Son was considered one of the best people for information about Robert.

When interest for Johnson grew with the release in 62, Son was the one who gave most of the stories and tales. In fact, part of the mystic story of meeting the devil at the crossroads came from Son House. The story went that Son was playing at a juke joint and when he took a break, Robert went up to play, and was awful and literally boo'd off the stage. Son admonished the young Robert, who left. He didn't see him for about a year, and one night Robert came back a changed man, he could play exceedingly well. Son was amazed at how good Robert had become in such a short time. And Son said that when Robert finished a song, he would say 'I sold my soul for that song'.

No back to the matter at hand. As much as I tried, I couldn't find any comment from any source that said the recording was alot faster than Robert live. There just never seems to be much discussion about the speed of Robert's recordings around that time. And remember that in the late 60s Cream would do Crossroads - so his music was out there in the public conscience.

I look at it like this. Is it sped up? Maybe a little - basing on the info you gave and the Ward poster at mudcat. But 20%? nah. just too much. But back then, its a neat way to make a cheap website and sell cds for 4 pounds in england.

[edit]The writer of the webpage talks at one point about how slowing it down makes Robert sound more like his mentor Son House. Well, lets compare.

Here's crossroads at 80%

gjXPo-uYdFo

Here's Son House singing Grinnin in your face (recorded 1964 when Son was 52 compared with 1936-37 for Robert) with better gear.

qTlSka5iqPY

Its just too slow. If Robert is fast, my guess is that its 3-4% tops.

[cameraman]

I think the 20% number is too high but if the cutter was running at 72 instead of 78 that is 10% right there. Since all the tracks we have are consistent and they were engineered by the same person I'm thinking his equipment ran at a lower rpm, hell back then his electricity could have been a lower than spec voltage. Things were not dialed in that well in the 30's.

[emjaya]

Here's crossroads at 80%

gjXPo-uYdFo



That sounds terrible to me. :confused:

I listened to it and then to a normal speed copy I have here. They are going to have to do more to convince me to buy a slowed down version.



O/T: My inlaws had a record player that they used to play endless Slim Whitman albums. It ran at a couple of rpm faster than 33⅓ and made every album they played sound like it was by the chipmunks. They didn't notice until a friend of theirs said something and they had it fixed.

Didn't make Slim Whitman any easier to listen to, though. :yuck:

[nrc]

To me it sounds like a recording slowed down. I think the article linked in the original article argues pretty effectively against it. http://www.elijahwald.com/johnsonspeed.html

I think Johnson singing in a high register sounds odd to the modern ear, but it wasn't at all unusual for the period. Elmore James knew Robert Johnson and his version of Dust My Broom certainly doesn't sound like he was inspired by an 80% version of Robert Johnson.

[racer2c]

I think the 20% number is too high but if the cutter was running at 72 instead of 78 that is 10% right there. Since all the tracks we have are consistent and they were engineered by the same person I'm thinking his equipment ran at a lower rpm, hell back then his electricity could have been a lower than spec voltage. Things were not dialed in that well in the 30's.

Exactly. Some students of the genre believe Robert J played an open G tuning with a capo. A capo is clearly seen in the few pictures of him. I grabbed my acoustic tonight, tuned to a perfect standard tuning and identified the lowest note from DM's link above to be a bit sharp of a low G. It wasn't quite a true G# however. Played at actual speed that should land in the A root, which would be quite high for an open tuned slide.
In my opinion, considering the era, the self taught aspect of musicianship, I think it reasonable to consider that the music that was produced in that period came from the heart, soul...where the instrument was an extension of the man, tuned to the feel of they day, played by the feel of the moment. Rarely, if ever duplicated in a modern sense. If the humid Mississippi summer days detuned Roberts strings, then a quick tune up from wherever the E string fell was good enough.

Whether it's 5% or 20%, I'm pretty much sold on the idea that the recordings could be faster than 'actual' speed, but since each song was played by feel rather than structure, I think Mr Johnson would think this a silly discussion. Interesting though!

[JohnHKart]

What a great thread! Mindblowing stuff. Thanks very much!!! It sucks that albums like The Doors were ruined by a tape machine failure. Several songs in the machine started slowing down, so what we usually hear now (such as Light My Fire, Crystal Ship) is the wrong tempo and keys (slower and dopier than at the right pitch and speed). It's correct on the box sets, but only on the DVD audio.