amii stewart--knock on wood

In the late '80s, Dr. Demento used to play a Chuck Berry parody by Steve Layland & the Ruined Choir called "Johnny B Minor", which is "Johnny B Goode" played in a minor key.

As long as I don't have to sit through "My Ding-A-Ling" ever again... (Just my opinion. Others may insist that "My Ding-A-Ling" is the greatest pop song of all time.)

To answer the question about the "ideal" speed...

Just looking at the beginning of the song, the closest you can get to the original performance pitch is the regular US 12" (Long Disco) version, which only runs 0.27% slow, not enough to even hear, a difference of only 0.4 BPM, by my counter. (This is based on DjPaulT's rip from 2012; I don't have the actual record to confirm.)

The edited US 12" versions as found on the CDs The Disco Years vol. 3 (which Ron says is an early fade of the US promo 45 "disco" version) and on Pottery Barn Disco (an even earlier fade with 0:29 shaved off the intro) both run 0.66% fast, which I can hear, but just barely; it's not bad. The UK 12" runs about the same speed.

Meanwhile, the US 45 runs 0.79% fast.

Other versions I tested were well outside of this range, usually on the slow side by 1.6% or more.

Yes, that sounds right.

But keep in mind that songs with live drummers, even disco songs, are notoriously variable in tempo. Plus there's sometimes speed variations due to tape drag and edits. What we are reporting is what our counter tells us is the average tempo across the entire song.

Also, these automatic BPM counters don't always agree. I use foo_bpm in foobar2000, and it has a lot of options that can affect what it detects. There's a margin of error compared to whatever Ron uses; my numbers are usually slightly off from his, so I usually don't mention them.



Edited by mjb50