I have taken Rambling On My Mind, slowed it down a bit and lowered the key to approximate a slower tape. Recently, an old music tutor of mine – Paul Scott contacted me to say: "The Robert Johnson recordings were not done originally to tape. They … Read Morewere electrical recordings, done directly to matrices. Tape recording only began being used after the Second World War – it was a German invention." This means that the songs we hear are the originals, or that they were speeded up when they were transferred to tape later on.

22 thoughts on “Rambling On My Mind – Robert Johnson

  1. Hmm… I don’t know if this is what Robert would’ve sounded like. Look at the guy, he’s young, he doesn’t look like he’d have a very deep voice like this.

  2. I can appreciate what you are trying to demonstrate here by slowing this recording down. I have to say it doesn’t sound right to me. I have listened to his music carefully and studied Mr. Johnson’s sound and life with great interest. The fact that he was young when he died and slight of build leads me to believe that your edited version of his music sounds very much like an older and larger man. They way some of the words sound,i.e.," I got mean things on my mind," definitely sound too slow.

  3. how would u know no way you heard him in real life

  4. how would u know no way you heard him in real life

  5. So this should be truer to the original sound? Awesome.

    Say, any chance of uploading more Robert Johnson on this account, Andytheashton? I think people would appreciate 32-20, Terraplane, Malted Milk, and some others!

    Thanks for the upload.

  6. You do understand that Robert Johnson was one of the very first artists ever recorded, right?

  7. I am old enough to know that this is an EXCELLENT rendition of the original sound. Thank you so very much for posting! You have brought back some very pleasant memories.

  8. I’d heard the theory about the speeded-up recordings, but never took the initiative to slow them down. Thanks for posting. Really cool.

  9. There was no standard speed fomat for recording at that time and many early blues songs were probably recorded at 70rpm (rather than 78).

  10. It’s stupid to think people CANNOT hypothesize about such things.

  11. don’t sound quite right, but I ain’t gonna lie. It sounds pretty cool

  12. way to slow. they were recorded too slow by at most 3{10faa3092bae83cdf963b1ab1025701434ba1e012413cb9c0c72be0a479389c3}. nice idea, though. your teacher is wrong. tape recording existed since at least the 20’s however it was VERY uncommon.

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