Originally Posted by
GuitarGeek
Actually, I have a friend who insists that if the Robert Johnson recording those songs at the speed that we've always heard them at, he'd be doing stuff that would be virtually impossible, like barring at like the 14th or 16th fret, which would be physically impossible on a conventional, non cutaway guitar, unless we're to believe he'd slide the guitar down on his lap, like a Hawaiian guitar, and do it, then slide the guitar back up into regular, "Spanish" style playign position.
Oh and this friend me plays guitar, banjo, is well versed in acoustic guitar styles, having explored players like Leo Kottke and John Fahey, and apparently pissed off a lot of Pere Ubu people when he made it known that Jim Jones' "secret" guitar tuning was in fact plain old open E. So I think my friend Derek probably knows what he's talking about, when he suggests that the Johnson recordings should be pitched a step or two lower than they Columbia has been presenting them to us.
Also, keep in mind that varispeeding recordings has happened on lots of other occasions. Teo Macero sped up side two of Kind Of Blue (when CBS put out the remastered edition, they presented the two pieces at their "correct speed" saying that they were sped up due to a "mastering error", but Teo always insisted he did it on purpose). Chuck Berry claimed Leonard Chess sped up his recordings, to make his singing voice sound like that of a teenager (there's at least one compilation that has a couple songs on it that seems to back up this statement). And I believe Tom Dowd admitted he sped up some of the tracks on Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, just because he thought they had a little better vibe at a slightly faster tempo (basically, same argument used by Teo Macero).
So it's not beyond the realm of possibility that whichever reissue producer at Columbia, back in the 60's, was thinking, "These tracks will sound better if we sped them up just a bit".
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