Robert Johnson - Classic or Dud?

yes er uh exactly, that's what i thought i said, or was trying to think, or some such. not functioning too well today, for various reasons. but yeah.

that

ha, ok, i was confused ... dunno, i listened to those and didn't really buy it.

but i can see how they might kinda make the released versions sound weird.

i guess i was/am convinced. the recordings sound so natural and "correct" at reduced speed. and a lot more ordinary, too. on first hearing them, my response was immediate: "this is how robert johnson actually sounded." tone & timbre, singing, playing & rhythms all suddenly made so much more sense to me. but rather than encourage me to re-explore his work, it just bummed me out.

not sure why. loss of otherworldliness, a sense that i should have been able to figure it out on my own, something like that.

i think maybe there's another thread where it's discussed, but I just don't get it: how could people who knew and had heard robert johnson play not have said that the records were ridiculously sped up. Someone like Johnny Shines, who traveled/played with Johnson was asked about him a bazillion times in the 60s. Wouldn't he have spoken up about the vast difference between what the records sounded like and what Johnson supposedly *really* sounded like?

sure, that's a reasonable speculative argument, but it's hard for me to effectively marshal the resources of my intellect against the evidence of my senses (especially since my intellect is of the sort to confuse sped up with slowed down). my "belief" in the authenticity/accuracy of those slowed down recordings was immediate and has proven hard to unmake.

yeah, i agree -- the slowed down recordings do *sound* plausible when you hear them, i guess it's just the overall concept I find hard to believe.

http://www.amazon.com/Centennial-Collection-2-CD/dp/B004OFWLO0 appears to sound a lot better than the Complete Recordings - can anyone confirm this is the final bees knees in Robert Johnson collectabilia?

Compared to this latest remaster, the 1990 edition sounds like it was recorded with two tin cans tied together with some really frayed string. I'm no audiophile, but the sound on this -- for late-30s recordings, especially -- is absolutely jaw-dropping.

I have to agree - this sounds great. And also, to answer the very original question, I think Johnson's great. It blew my mind when I first heard him. And in a general sense, blues is the single least-rewarding pre-postpunk musical genres to my ears. Select a random dozen albums from jazz or punk or reggae or soul or classical or "old-timey" non-blues stuff or avant-garde or odd ethnic folk musics and there's about a 100% chance that I'll enjoy those much more than a random selection of blues albums.

i did eventually come around to RJ -- rebought 'king of the delta blues singers' last year and found it fairly mesmerizing. it's an incredibly well-sequenced album. hearing 'stones in my passway' and 'hellhound' back to back is crushing.

aw man, srsly? was fully prepared to ignore this reissue. but if the sound is really all that improved ...

vinyl fake 78 thing is 300 bucks. 1000 copies. someone sent me a link to some sony store that is selling them? 10-inch records made to look like the 78s. that's what i meant by fake. they should have just made 78s.

heard the vinyl comes with a piece of johnson's soul, provided by lucifer himself. so, you know, worth the $$.

xpost: 443 dollars: http://www.myplaydirect.com/robert-johnson/details/5747793

oh, wait, that's because my location is Belgium. Changed to USA, it's only $349.

yeah and the company store has a "deal" where its "only" 300 bucks.

At that price, they'd better be autographed by the man himself.

ok i needed a couple hours, but i've gotten over the fact that i'll probably end up buying this thing. it better sound as good as Tarfumes says! jk. but yeah, i mean, johnson is amazing. anyone who gets really into the blues is, at some point going to get all challopsy and say no man, son house/tommy johnson/charly patton is where it's at man, but once you get over that, Robert Johnson is fucking incredible all over again.

is the whole "these recordings have been playing at the wrong speed" thing addressed in the liner notes of this new thing? would love it if that was laid to rest.

I just a/b'd the 1990 and the 2011 again, and the one thing that immediately struck me is how the new remaster captures the sound of the room. You can really hear the space around Johnson's voice, which just adds to the harrowingness of it all. Unlike many veil-lifting remaster jobs, this one actually adds a level of mystery.

(btw, I just have the 2CD dealie; that vinyl box is borderline offensive)

yeah 2cd version is nicely priced -- $15 at amazon.

The "wrong speed" theory was sort of debunked here, but it's not addressed either way in the liner notes. xp

yeah that wald article seems pretty definitive, but i just read something else that claimed they've been playing at the wrong speed.

Odd. I wonder how this is determined, seeing as how no one really knows how Johnson tuned, meaning, did he tune his guitar to a piano, a tuning fork, or neither?

Tried out some other contemporary (pre rock n roll) stuff and while I did like some tracks by people like Leadbelly or Blind Lemon Jefferson, there's only two artists I love everything by: RJ and Washington Phillips (who couldn't be more different from RJ. Not a great singer or musician (the longer songs are split up in two takes because he keeps speeding up and can't keep up after a while), and he sang these god fearing, honor your parents type lyrics, but he's so incredibly authentic that I'm moved every time.)

I've had the 1990 box since it was released, but getting the Centennial CDs as well now, thanks for the impressions!

re: the reason the speed question won't die -- it *is* interesting how much he sounds like son house when slowed down, so i think there's a little something there that convinces people (or at least makes them consider the possibility). but as wald lays out in that article, it really seems unlikely to me.

Sold on that 2-CD thing

Wow

Sounds good to me.

Used to think it was cheesy that Dion DiMucci painted a big picture of Robert Johnson and then had a picture taken of himself sitting in front of it but now I've warmed up to this.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/rip-mack-mccormick/

WBGO celebrating his birthday right now, a few days early, with some "Elgin movements" on the Blues Break.

i know i'm doing exactly what the marketing people want me to do but fuck it:

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5ec55c9b3020048a55dc4c9b/master/w_2560%2Cc_limit/Brother-Robert-Lede.jpg

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/05/exclusive-first-look-at-new-photograph-of-blues-legend-robert-johnson

third photo is a huge deal imo

Aww, new photo

Wait, what, another one?

an exclusive first look, the photograph is presented here as it appears on the cover of Brother Robert: Growing Up With Robert Johnson, Mrs. Anderson’s forthcoming memoir written with Preston Lauterbach, to be published by Hachette on June 9. In an excerpt from the book, Mrs. Anderson, now 94, recounts the day the photograph was taken:

I'm just about to get around to listening to Robert Johnson and I'm afraid a challenging opinion may be brewing.

Listening to the Centennial Collection mentioned upthread, which I somehow didn't know existed until yesterday, and holy fucking shit. Even on Spotify it sounds like a completely different set of recordings than the early 90s version, which I owned on cassette. I need to own this.

it's strange that, for a collection whose major distinction is that the songs have been remastered for unprecedented sonic clarity, they would design the cover with fake sepia and wear / tear (water damage?) + ye olde general store font, like it's a nitty gritty dirt band record or something

lol

I'm just about to get around to listening to Robert Johnson and I'm afraid a challenging opinion may be brewing.

― Wuhan!! Got You All in Check (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, May 21, 2020 8:56 AM

please check back in with this. very curious.

Listening to the Centennial Collection mentioned upthread, which I somehow didn't know existed until yesterday, and holy fucking shit

Has the speed been reduced on that one? I know that the "too fast" theory has been questioned but idk the "Complete Recordings" box set I used to own in the 90s always sounded sped up to me.

xp Just been listening to '26-'29 recordings of much less filtered blues / roots recordings and now I've got to the mid '30s, and the lomaxes have arrived and this astonishing variety of music has turned into capital-B Blues, as filtered through the prism of the taste of a couple of white guys with well-meaning but ultimately racist ideas about noble savages and the like. Lots of this music is good! but also it is much more uniform than before. I worry that RJ's music will be much the same as Kokomo Arnold or Big Bill Broonzy, just with a mythology added which I don't care about. But maybe I'll be wrong, who knows. Will know in a couple of months.

Has the speed been reduced on that one?

It must have been; it seriously sounds like you're sitting across from a guy who's playing an acoustic guitar and singing.

Does sound a lot different but a spot check of "Kind-Hearted Woman Blues" gives the exact same runtime.

Unless of course Spotify just put the same recordings retrofitted into King of the Delta Blues Singers.

I worry that RJ's music will be much the same as Kokomo Arnold or Big Bill Broonzy, just with a mythology added which I don't care about. But maybe I'll be wrong, who knows. Will know in a couple of months.

This is pretty much my experience tbh. As a kid my intro to this world of early blues was skip james, and by the time i got around to robert johnson i couldnt figure out why he was elevated as the great figure of this era & genre (other than he happens to be the guy who many influential 70s rockers were first introduced to). I like the records plenty, but dont find a lot there that I cant also get from a good number of other players around then. Especially if you're already well steeped in the sounds and figures of that era, I'd say dont go in expecting any major revelations.