I bought the Carl Perkins and the Jerry Lee Box set and the second volume of a Johnny Fuller collection and imagine my surprise when some of my favourite songs didn’t seem quite as exciting as I remembered them. I have compared those takes with other versions I have heard and come to the conclusion that some of our classics have been ‘studio produced’, i.e. are speeded up and added echo versions of originals.
The well-known one is Carl Perkins’s ‘your true love’ and the comments by a certain *Welch 7985 on YouTube ring true: “Carl’s brothers sounded even more like the chipmunks when Sam speeded up the tape for the master. Several songs on Sun at that time were speeded up and the folks at Bear Family never figured that out and released their box sets with the earlier, normal speed recordings. It wasn’t what we listened to in the ’50s.”
I thought it might be of passing interest for others to see my geeky conclusions for a few of these songs. I hope they do convey the difference.
Carl Perkins (Sun)
| original timing | sped-up timing | |||
| ‘your true love’ | 181 secs 12 secs clipped from intro riff compared to speeded version. | > | 163 secs (90% ratio) |
original ‘your true love’
sped-up ‘your true love’
Jerry Lee Lewis 1957 (Sun)
| original timing | sped-up timing | added echo | ||
| ‘whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on’ | 175 secs | > | 168 secs (96% ratio) | yes |
| ‘it’ll be me’ | 163 secs | > | 159 secs (97% ratio) | yes |
| ‘great balls of fire’ | lost | > | 109 secs | yes |
original ‘whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on’
sped-up ‘whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on’
original ‘it’ll be me’
sped-up ‘it’ll be me’
See www.706unionavenue.nl/74125249 for discussion by Andrew McRae of the way ‘great balls of fire was recorded’.
But being unable to present an underlying, undubbed, tape we have opted to include the master originally released on Sun 281 as part of the main sequence, rather than consign it to the collection of overdubs on BCD 17254-18-1.
sometimes only of an added echo as in ‘great balls of fire’).
original version www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4NYg46PF6w
original ‘great balls of fire’
sped-up ‘great balls of fire’
Johnny Fuller 1958 (Irma)
| original timing | sped-up timing | added echo | ||
| ‘all night long’ | 184 secs | > | 179 secs (97% ratio) | yes |
| ‘you got me whistlin’’ | 133 secs | > | 126 secs (95% ratio) | yes |
‘you got me whistlin” (original)
‘you got me whistlin” (sped-up)
‘all night long’ (original)
‘all night long’ (sped-up)
Unfortunately, only the original versions are to be found on Johnny Fuller West Coast Rhythm and Blues vol.2 by Official
Chuck Berry in an interview uploaded in 2013 told Robbie Robertson that knowing Berry was in his late 20s, Leonard Chess speeded up his recordings to make him sound younger.
There’s food for thought here. We may like the improved versions and, indeed, have come to love them, but how would we react when hearing these acts live? At least contemporary artists can feel better about their performances if they feel they can’t match the classics of Jerry Lee and others.
POSTED 2015.
Common method in 1950s. Bear Family issue of complete Fats Domino Box set in 2019 included “for the first time anywhere … some of Fats’s biggest hits as they were originally recorded, not sped-up for release.”
References
| ⇑1 | 2 secs clipped from intro riff compared to speeded version. |
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