Very interesting and specialized post Henry. Thanks. The gold standard in playback is of course to best approximate how the original was performed. However, it can be fun to play around with the speeds and such. No harm in that as you also agree.
Speaking of pitch and experimenting, the great American musician/composer and musical anarchist, Charles Ives, indulged and delighted in creatively re-arranging and mashing together popular music of (then) recent (mostly) American past into fascinating new and original tapestries of sound. I can imagine him taking a King Oliver record and playing it against a Stephen Foster melody like Old Folks at Home just for the fun of it
Henry wrote:The King Oliver number as heard here in playback is in the tonic key of A major (3 sharps)---a most improbable choice for any jazz piece, and especially for one in that era. Raising the turntable speed to bring the tonic up a half step to Bb major (2 flats) puts the number in a typical key for this kind of ensemble, where the main wind instruments (cornet, clarinet, trombone) are all also in Bb. In the case of cornet and clarinet, which are transposing instruments, they are really playing in C major, which sounds Bb major on a Bb instrument. And Bb is the "home" key, as it were, for the trombone as well, although it is not a transposing instrument. The Ted Weems number, as heard here, is in the tonic key of F# (5 sharps)---an even more unlikely key than the Oliver! Better raise it a half step to G (one sharp), which is more likely for a band reading from written arrangements. The piece would also work down a half step to F major.
The prior question to be answered here is whether the turntable is revolving at 78 rpm. If so, and these playback pitches are as heard, then the masters were not recorded at 78.
Certainly you may play a record at whatever speed suits you, but that may not be the correct speed as originally performed and recorded. As a general rule, jazz players improvising in small ensembles preferred keys with flats (major keys of F, Bb, Eb, and Ab, and their relative minors d, g, c, and f, respectively) to keys with sharps. This knowledge may serve as a useful guide to selecting an appropriate playback speed. Of course, you also would need a handy tone generator to ascertain a reference pitch, unless you are blessed/cursed with pitch recognition (so-called "absolute pitch").
The Brunswick Cortez sounds fabulous---thanks for posting!
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