Possibly not, according to John Gibbens. He says the records we all know (and many of us worship) have always been played at the wrong speed.
I find his evidence persuasive. It's partially based on the technical difficulties posed by playing slide as high on the neck as would be necessary at those pitches, partially based on the single photograph we have of Johnson holding a guitar, influenced by how much shorter Johnson's recordings are than those of other Delta blues singers, and convincingly based on the results of slowing down the recordings by three semitones.
Pitch-shifted, Johnson now sounds much more like his mentors—as well as sounding like even more of a direct influence on his younger contemporaries, such as Muddy Waters. Plus, he's a better vocalist. (Gibbens has posted MP3s of his pitch-shifted experiments.)
Do I completely buy Gibbens' theory? It's too early for me to tell. I'll heard the Johnson canon at the (perhaps) "wrong" speed all my life. It's what sounds right, if only by dint of repetition. It will take me time to process this new way of hearing Johnson—and anything that makes me hear those recordings in a new way is worth checking out.
Via Jeff Wong.
