Friday, 28 May 2010
Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues Singers (speed-corrected)
Some time ago I posted Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues Singers.
The next day I received the following comment;
Moos - it's widely agreed now that all of Johnson's 78s were speeded up. If you've some means of slowing the LP down - like a direct drive turntable - you'll suddenly find yourself listening to a sexy young black guy with a cool guitar sound - less of paranoid gabbler, more of a human being.
Le Grand Maître.
Well, Grand Maître, here it is, I had to gamble a bit how much to slow it down. My Technics turntable helped me finding a suitable speed and I guess this must be it more or less. I totally agree with the slower version.
The next day I received the following comment;
Moos - it's widely agreed now that all of Johnson's 78s were speeded up. If you've some means of slowing the LP down - like a direct drive turntable - you'll suddenly find yourself listening to a sexy young black guy with a cool guitar sound - less of paranoid gabbler, more of a human being.
Le Grand Maître.
Well, Grand Maître, here it is, I had to gamble a bit how much to slow it down. My Technics turntable helped me finding a suitable speed and I guess this must be it more or less. I totally agree with the slower version.
1 Crossroads blues
2 Terraplane blues
3 Come on in my kitchen
4 Walking blues
5 Last fair deal gone down
6 32-20 blues
7 Kindhearted woman blues
8 If I had posession over judgment day
9 Preaching blues
10 When you got a good friend
11 Rambling on my mind
12 Stones in my passway
13 Traveling riverside blues
14 Mikcow's calf blues
15 Me and the devil blues
16 Hellhound on my trail
2 Terraplane blues
3 Come on in my kitchen
4 Walking blues
5 Last fair deal gone down
6 32-20 blues
7 Kindhearted woman blues
8 If I had posession over judgment day
9 Preaching blues
10 When you got a good friend
11 Rambling on my mind
12 Stones in my passway
13 Traveling riverside blues
14 Mikcow's calf blues
15 Me and the devil blues
16 Hellhound on my trail
Moos @'Global Grooves'
Steady Rollin’ Man - A Revolutionary Critique of Robert Johnson
An abiding mystery about Robert Johnson is the rpm conundrum. Is it true, as a Japanese musician told me it is widely held to be in Japan, that Robert Johnson’s records play way too fast? Should he actually sound much more like his great mentor, Son House?
One guitar tutorial book, Country Blues Bottleneck Guitar by James Ferguson and Richard Gellis (Walter Kane Publications, New York, 1976), proposes that Robert Johnson’s ‘Walking Blues’ is played with the guitar tuned to G (i.e. so that the open strings play a chord of G major – D-G-D-G-B-D, from bass to treble) and with a capo on the fourth fret. This means that the opening phrase, played an octave higher than the open strings – i.e. twelve frets down the neck from the capo – has to be played at the sixteenth fret. On the kind of guitar that has the neck joining the body at the fourteenth fret – like the one that Johnson is holding in one of the long-sought-after photographs of him, reproduced above right – this means manoeuvring the slide above the fingerboard a good inch beyond the end of the neck. On a guitar with the neck-body join at the twelfth fret, as in the photograph reproduced above left, it means stretching even further – a most uncomfortable position that would make it hard to play accurately.
There are four other Johnson tunes in the book. One, ‘I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom’, is given in an arrangement by Taj Mahal; the rest follow the original recordings, and all of these are supposed to be capoed at the third fret. The only other piece in the book to be played with a capo on the third is by the Georgia-born Tampa Red. The pieces by the other Mississippi Delta slide players in the book – Bukka White, Bobby Grant, Mississippi Fred McDowell – are all played open or, in one case, with a capo on the first fret.
Now if we turn to the song on which Robert Johnson’s ‘Walking Blues’ is based, namely ‘My Black Mama’ by Son House [Example 1], we find that on his recording of it in 1930, he plays in open G, capo on the first. What happens, then, if we slow Johnson’s record until it is in the same key as the song it’s modelled on [Example 2] – and if we bring the rest of his records down likewise, so that those pieces that sound as though they’re capoed on the third would actually be played in the much more natural way, with open strings? This means lowering the key by three semitones, a quarter of an octave – which means slowing the recordings to 80 per cent of the speed at which they normally play. (I accomplished this by playing my old King of the Delta Blues Singers LPs with the pitch control on the turntable turned as low as it would go and taping them with the pitch control on the cassette deck turned as high as it would go, then turning the pitch control down slightly while I dubbed it to another cassette deck. The end result was the equivalent of a 33-1/3-rpm record playing at 26-2/3-rpm.)
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.
As for why and how it could have come about, I’ve no idea. But if all the recordings should really play at 80 per cent of their current speed, that wouldn’t make them exceptionally long. The sixteen cuts of the first Robert Johnson LP, King of the Delta Blues Singers, have an average duration of two minutes 38 seconds. This is noticeably shorter than, for example, the sixteen cuts on an LP collection of Leroy Carr’s blues from 1932 to 1934, which average just over three minutes; or of the twelve cuts on a collection of Blind Willie McTell’s blues from 1935 (about 80 per cent of the length, in fact). On the other hand, it matches, almost to the second, the average duration of sixteen tracks recorded in May 1937 by Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Joe Williams – a month before “poor Bob’s” last session. But this is up-tempo, good-time blues, as suggested by the title of this Williamson/Williams LP – Throw a Boogie Woogie. Two of the songs in this compilation became rocking Blues Boom standards in the 1960s – ‘Good Morning School Girl’ and ‘Please Don’t Go’.
Similarly, on a two-CD set that collects all of the 42 masters cut by the rugged Delta musician Tommy McClennan between 1939 and 1942, the average length is only a wee bit longer than Johnson’s, around two minutes fifty – but McClennan is another purveyor of the boogie, a much simpler artist than our “Robert chile”. When he was recommended for his first recording session by the duke of pre-war Chicago blues, Big Bill Broonzy, it was surely because, despite the rude country style, McClennan’s ever-driving beat and bragging personality could still cut it with the juke-joint dancers – something that ‘Love In Vain’ and ‘Come On In My Kitchen’ weren’t likely to do.
If the theory I’ve advanced is not completely crazy, a possible motive for speeding up Johnson’s records might have been to try to make them more exciting for an age in which the Delta tradition he came out of was already a thing of the past.
Perhaps there are scientific tests that could be applied to the sound that might establish its original frequencies – to the qualities of the voice, for example, like the vibrato, which at full speed sounds to me like an alien nasal flutter but at slower speeds like a proper musical ornament; or perhaps to the decay time of the guitar notes.
Robert Johnson’s records occupy a place of unique esteem in the heritage of 20th-century popular music. In addition to their innate artistic excellence, they exerted a huge influence on the subsequent development of the blues, and on the other forms, like rock, that drew on the blues. They are universally acclaimed by critics: Greil Marcus, for example, the dean of rock writers, while he might not be so blunt as to tag the first Robert Johnson LP as The Greatest Album Of All Time, certainly regards it as An Album Than Which None Better Has Been Made. This cultural prestige is reflected in the continuing demand for Johnson’s music: the 1990 CD box-set of The Complete Recordings, with an expected sale of about twenty thousand, sold half a million. If the records are, in fact, distinctly inaccurate, perhaps we should be told.
Postscript
The ideas outlined above are presented to stimulate further debate and investigation. It’s quite possible, for example, that my detuning of Johnson’s records by a tone and a half is too extreme. Perhaps he did not habitually play with open strings, as I have assumed, but favoured the use of a capo most of the time. Observant readers will have noticed that in one of the two photos at the top of the page, his guitar has a capo on the second fret. Johnson is known to have travelled widely and appears to have absorbed many other styles in addition to the Mississippi Delta blues which provided the original matrix for his music. His practices, therefore, can’t be ascertained solely by those of his Delta models, mentors and contemporaries. I’d be glad to hear the thoughts of you blues aficionados and appreciators out there: johngibbens@touched.co.uk
Now if we turn to the song on which Robert Johnson’s ‘Walking Blues’ is based, namely ‘My Black Mama’ by Son House [Example 1], we find that on his recording of it in 1930, he plays in open G, capo on the first. What happens, then, if we slow Johnson’s record until it is in the same key as the song it’s modelled on [Example 2] – and if we bring the rest of his records down likewise, so that those pieces that sound as though they’re capoed on the third would actually be played in the much more natural way, with open strings? This means lowering the key by three semitones, a quarter of an octave – which means slowing the recordings to 80 per cent of the speed at which they normally play. (I accomplished this by playing my old King of the Delta Blues Singers LPs with the pitch control on the turntable turned as low as it would go and taping them with the pitch control on the cassette deck turned as high as it would go, then turning the pitch control down slightly while I dubbed it to another cassette deck. The end result was the equivalent of a 33-1/3-rpm record playing at 26-2/3-rpm.)
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.
As for why and how it could have come about, I’ve no idea. But if all the recordings should really play at 80 per cent of their current speed, that wouldn’t make them exceptionally long. The sixteen cuts of the first Robert Johnson LP, King of the Delta Blues Singers, have an average duration of two minutes 38 seconds. This is noticeably shorter than, for example, the sixteen cuts on an LP collection of Leroy Carr’s blues from 1932 to 1934, which average just over three minutes; or of the twelve cuts on a collection of Blind Willie McTell’s blues from 1935 (about 80 per cent of the length, in fact). On the other hand, it matches, almost to the second, the average duration of sixteen tracks recorded in May 1937 by Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Joe Williams – a month before “poor Bob’s” last session. But this is up-tempo, good-time blues, as suggested by the title of this Williamson/Williams LP – Throw a Boogie Woogie. Two of the songs in this compilation became rocking Blues Boom standards in the 1960s – ‘Good Morning School Girl’ and ‘Please Don’t Go’.
Similarly, on a two-CD set that collects all of the 42 masters cut by the rugged Delta musician Tommy McClennan between 1939 and 1942, the average length is only a wee bit longer than Johnson’s, around two minutes fifty – but McClennan is another purveyor of the boogie, a much simpler artist than our “Robert chile”. When he was recommended for his first recording session by the duke of pre-war Chicago blues, Big Bill Broonzy, it was surely because, despite the rude country style, McClennan’s ever-driving beat and bragging personality could still cut it with the juke-joint dancers – something that ‘Love In Vain’ and ‘Come On In My Kitchen’ weren’t likely to do.
If the theory I’ve advanced is not completely crazy, a possible motive for speeding up Johnson’s records might have been to try to make them more exciting for an age in which the Delta tradition he came out of was already a thing of the past.
Perhaps there are scientific tests that could be applied to the sound that might establish its original frequencies – to the qualities of the voice, for example, like the vibrato, which at full speed sounds to me like an alien nasal flutter but at slower speeds like a proper musical ornament; or perhaps to the decay time of the guitar notes.
Robert Johnson’s records occupy a place of unique esteem in the heritage of 20th-century popular music. In addition to their innate artistic excellence, they exerted a huge influence on the subsequent development of the blues, and on the other forms, like rock, that drew on the blues. They are universally acclaimed by critics: Greil Marcus, for example, the dean of rock writers, while he might not be so blunt as to tag the first Robert Johnson LP as The Greatest Album Of All Time, certainly regards it as An Album Than Which None Better Has Been Made. This cultural prestige is reflected in the continuing demand for Johnson’s music: the 1990 CD box-set of The Complete Recordings, with an expected sale of about twenty thousand, sold half a million. If the records are, in fact, distinctly inaccurate, perhaps we should be told.
Postscript
The ideas outlined above are presented to stimulate further debate and investigation. It’s quite possible, for example, that my detuning of Johnson’s records by a tone and a half is too extreme. Perhaps he did not habitually play with open strings, as I have assumed, but favoured the use of a capo most of the time. Observant readers will have noticed that in one of the two photos at the top of the page, his guitar has a capo on the second fret. Johnson is known to have travelled widely and appears to have absorbed many other styles in addition to the Mississippi Delta blues which provided the original matrix for his music. His practices, therefore, can’t be ascertained solely by those of his Delta models, mentors and contemporaries. I’d be glad to hear the thoughts of you blues aficionados and appreciators out there: johngibbens@touched.co.uk
1. Son House, My Black Mama Part I (1930), last verse (file size: 116KB)
2. Robert Johnson, Walking Blues, last verse, slowed down (132KB)
3. Robert Johnson, Kindhearted Woman Blues, excerpt, slowed down (144KB)
4. Robert Johnson, Come On In My Kitchen, excerpt, slowed down (204KB)
5. Robert Johnson, Love in Vain, last verse, slowed down (176KB)
6. Robert Johnson, Crossroads Blues, as officially released (80KB)
7. Robert Johnson, Crossroads Blues, slowed down (204KB)
Thanx to PaulO'S! Who linked to this article
John Gibbens @'touched'
There is a CD containing 24 tracks of slowed-down Robert Johnson, which you can buy for £4 in the UK, £5 overseas (including P&P). Click on the cover below to order:
Iran Protesters' Twitter Revolution On Display In Paris
Dancers at the 59 Rivoli gallery in Paris perform in front of TVs displaying mobile phone videos. The "Action 1" exhibit features images captured by ordinary Iranians during huge protests against last year's re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
An exhibit in Paris brings together some of the thousands of mobile phone videos shot by anti-government protesters after last June's disputed presidential election.
Tehran largely banned international and Iranian media from freely covering the massive wave of protests over alleged fraud in the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
But Iranians overcame the reporting ban by using their cell phones and social-networking and image-sharing websites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
The Paris exhibit, "Action 1," gives visitors a firsthand look at the demonstrations and the crackdown that seem to have changed the lives of millions of Iranians.
'Solidarity Beyond Imagination'
The exhibit's organizers viewed thousands of Internet videos before making the selection to display in 59 Rivoli, a gallery off Paris' busy rue de Rivoli. The group calls itself the Green Ribbon, after the symbol of Iran's opposition movement. It is made up of Iranians living in France as well as some French artists who came together after last year's election to support Iranian artists.
Orash, one of the Green Ribbon's leaders, came to Paris from Iran a year and a half ago. He doesn't want to give his last name in case he returns — and out of solidarity with the exhibit's anonymous video artists. Orash says last year's demonstrations ended the isolation of millions of Iranians.
"Personally ... I thought that I don't want this regime, but I am the only one. It's no good to shout, it's no good to write, to create. But after these events, I saw that millions and millions of [people] are thinking the same way. So it gave new hope for Iranians all over the world, and it has created a solidarity beyond imagination," Orash says.
Scenes of violence play out on TV screens all over the gallery as black-clad Basiji militia beat people and chase crowds of young people through the streets. French subtitles translate some of the conversation of those filming. "They look just like the Gestapo," says one witness.
Generation Gap
Scottish visitor Stephen Riley said he was seeing the footage for the first time.
"The contrast between the physical arms of the militia and the communication arms of the protesters, which seems to amount to mobile phones and cameras, is quite a striking paradox," Riley says.
Riley came to the exhibit with his friend, a 50-year-old Iranian who calls herself Aryan H., because she also fears giving her last name. Aryan H. has lived in Paris for 20 years. In 1979, she demonstrated to overthrow the shah and bring Ayatollah Khomeini to power. She says many young people still blame her generation for that.
"My generation, we [were] very ashamed, because it was our fault what's happened to them," she says, adding that the latest demonstrations have helped bring the two generations back together.
A Gathering Point
The exhibit has become a gathering point for Paris' Iranian community. Expats converse in Farsi on the sidewalk in front of the gallery.
Giant reproductions of some of the Twitter messages sent during the protests hang in the gallery's tall windows. "It's getting harder to log on to the Net," reads one. "Our phone line was cut and we lost Internet," says another.
The gallery's top floor is pitch dark, except for some tiny electric candles placed around the floor. The room is filled with the sound of people chanting "Allahu akbar," or "God is great," from the rooftops of Tehran.
Another Green Ribbon member, Azam, 27, says this chanting went on every night for more than six months after the June 12 election, turning what was once a mantra of the Islamic revolution into a call for protest. She says the nightly ritual brought people closer.
"They went to the top of their house or behind their window, and they say 'Allahu akbar,' and in front of your house there's another house, and there's someone there who says 'Allahu akbar,' and they know each other after one month. And it's so kind," Azam says.
These young Iranians say they believe it is only a matter of time before the movement that began last summer leads to real change in Iran.
Audio download also available
Eleanor Beardsley @'npr'
M.I.A. Takes Revenge on New York Times Writer Lynn Hirschberg
Yesterday, The New York Times published an in-depth profile of M.I.A. written by Times staffer Lynn Hirschberg. The lengthy read followed M.I.A. through the making and promoting of her new album / \ / \ / \ Y / \. In examining many of the contradictions that make up M.I.A.'s persona, it wasn't totally complimentary, and contained un-flattering quotes from several people in M.I.A.'s camp (including Diplo and "Born Free" director Romain Gavras), not to mention M.I.A. herself.Well, it seems that M.I.A. wasn't too happy with the piece. She just Tweeted "CALL ME IF YOU WANNA TALK TO ME ABOUT THE N Y T TRUTH ISSUE, ill b taking calls all day bitches ;)", accompanied by a phone number. We just called the phone number... and it seems to be Lynn Hirschberg's phone number. And now her voicemail is full.
Ouch.
UPDATE: She just Tweeted: NEWS IS AN OPINION! UNEDITED VERSION OF THE INTERVIEW WILL BE ON neetrecordings THIS MEMORIAL WEEKEND!!! >>>>
Ouch.
UPDATE: She just Tweeted: NEWS IS AN OPINION! UNEDITED VERSION OF THE INTERVIEW WILL BE ON neetrecordings THIS MEMORIAL WEEKEND!!! >>>>
The History of the Typewriter recited by Michael Winslow
“The History of the Typewriter recited by Michael Winslow” is a 21 minutes long film made by Ignacio Uriarte.
First he recorded the original sounds of 62 typewriters of different times, countries and technologies. Then, the actor Michael Winslow reproduced a selection of these sounds in chronolgical order, tracing a temporary journey through almost 100 years of history and creating this way an homage to the sound qualities of the typewriter and its former presence in the office.
It sounds amazing, you can see the quicktime version here. I bet he can do those modem dial-in sounds too. Remember those?
Via vvork
iSteel drums
A strange thing, but growing up we had a set of oil drums in the garage. My dad had been out to the West Indies a lot while he was in the merchant navy!
Wish I still had them...
BP wants Twitter to shut down fake account mocking the oil company. Twitter wants BP to shut down the leak that’s ruining the sea #BPGlobalPR
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