Robert Johnson - Classic or Dud?

FYI: A third photo of Robert Johnson has been discovered.

scroll to bottom of page: http://www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org/

yeah, there was a story in vanity fair (I think) about that pic a little while ago? they've definitely proved it's him?

think this is another grail artifact for boomers/cream fans more than anything.
that site is very um...blueshammer. anybody heard steven 't bear' johnson?

I have not heard him, but just his appearance is enough to keep him on my must-miss list until further notice.

I would stay away from the Complete Recordings. Better fidelity can be found on The King of The Delta Blues Singers remastered from 1998 and Vol 2 from 2004. Also you gain the newly found take on Traveling Riverside Blues. It was found in the Smithsonian. Going this route also gets rid of the problem of having back to back takes to listen to, which I find quite annoying.

listening to robert johnson recordings sped up a bit was kind of heartbreaking

why?

too convincing, stole the magic

do you mean those slowed down versions, or ...?

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.

Need one of RJ & Bonamassa shaking hands.

Lol

Dion DiMucci has a big Robert Johnson portrait he painted himself hanging prominently in his living room iirc

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialDion/photos/a.281029604934/403804609934/?type=3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUlVCZshZOU

It’s a far cry from using echo or digital reverberation to try and hide problems in recordings!

lol. some things never change.

this is an interesting project

thought I would hate it but to me it's ultimately more like Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old than George Lucas' special editions

Those samples sound pretty awful, the noise swells and shapes with the vocal so I feel like I've got sand in my ear and someone's riding the fader to mute the background.