What's the correct speed/pitch for Carl Perkins's "Your True Love"?

[Matt]

I was listening to a clip of this on CDNow and the pitch was way up.

This can't actually be the real pitch, can it? It's a semitone away from being the Chipmunks! (if I get this on CD, I want to try burning a copy with a corrected version).

[Steve Hoffman]

Ya never know what someone is going to ask on the DCC Forum...Love it!

The Bear Family "Carl Perkins box" has two versions of the master take of "Your True Love". The normal speed version, and the "hit" version, made by wrapping masking tape around the capstain of the Ampex 300 and redubbing.

Sam Phillips thought the song "laid there" at the regular speed, so he goosed it up.

[Highway Star]

On the 3 LP "Carl Perkins" Sun (Charly) box set I have there are 2 versions of this song, the original Sun release #261, and an alternate take. The booklet states there were at least 6 earlier versions of the song. The alternate on the LP is slower, referred to as being somewhat "sluggish." On the released version the notes say Sam Phillips wanted to lighten up Carls country boy vocals on this song, and hit upon the idea of speeding up the song. Here's an interesting quote: "...he [Phillips] cut about 17 seconds from the overall running time and made Carl sound like a northern Roy Orbison and the chorus sound like the Chipmunks." No info as to the actual speed though.

I've had this set for many years and haven't played it in a long time but may give it a spin tonight to compare the 2 versions.

[Steve Hoffman]

THe sad thing is, that after listening to the Chipmunk version for so long, the regular speed version really does sound sluggish to me now. ;)

[Highway Star]

I wonder if Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville) was a Carl Perkins fan? "Your True Love" was released the year before Seville released his high speed novelty tune, "Witch Doctor" (4/58).

[RetroSmith]

I doubt that the Perkins tune was responsible for Ross B's idea to create the Chipmunks. I've read that he was influenced by Les Pauls records, which had some speeded up guitar parts.

since we're on the subject, I'll submit that I recorded my own "Chipmunk" song while in college. It was for a class I was taking on electronic music. I did it with a Teac 3340, a Variac on the line plug, and LOTS of trial and error.
I DID discover how he did it tho.....the secret was that you slowed down the BACKING track to a different speed each time you overdubbed a vocal part. You had to "sing along" in time to a very slow backing track, in a normal pitched voice. You changed the variac to change the playback speed by around 15% each time. Then, when you played the tape back at 15 ips (normal speed) you had three different vocal parts, all in perfect sync with the backing.
I did a Beatles tune because I had the stereo "Beatles Second Album" that had some of the songs in two track stereo, giving me a perfect backing track without the Beatle Vocals to play with.

And yes, I got an "A". The teacher FLIPPED when I brought the cassette into class and played it. no one else in the whole class did anything like that, they were mostly synthesizer recordings and things like that.
He told me I should get a job in a recording studio if I could do that with amatuer equipment. I tried, I tried!!
Mikey