IIRC, the Classic Records one was the first to not suffer from that. I remember that from when I bought it, at least, but it’s been a while.
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Cheers @ricsimas 
I have the Classic and an earlier Japanese pressing - I’ll compare both, see if my cloth ears/brain can hear the difference.
The DeAgostini lp is actually not at all bad, looks right, apart from an obvious error, and sounds pretty good.
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If it’s from Amazon, even if you’ve opened it and played it, you can send it back FOC so long as it’s still in the return period, which I think is 30 days IIRC. Even if you bought the wrong label.
The Sony 2013 180 gm ‘mono’ cut in the US by RKS at Sterling and pressed at RTI was also of good quality. It seems to be available at Amazon in Canada and US. I think it was offered in both RSD (numbered) and non RSD (unnumbered) versions. The one in stock is likely to be the non-RSD.
ASIN:B00FMRWAD6
bar code:88883761031 5
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I have the Classic pressing and I’m sure you’re right. I also have the Sony Gold Mastersound CD which I think was the first commercial release with the correct speed.
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All tracks on Side A (SW, FF, BiG) ran too slowly on all releases until the 1992 remaster. From then on, AFAIK, every release has had all tracks playing at the correct speed.
Has anyone else noticed that this great album has just qualified for its free bus pass?
Mark
I think Mark Wilder (Sony engineer) believed or discovered in 1992 or thereabouts that the prime 3 track recorder that was used to mix down the original stereo tape master had been running a little slow during the recording session of the tracks on side 1 of the LP. Consequently when played back at the correct speed later the tracks run a little faster (or a little sharper in pitch)
The corrected speed tracks in my HDTT version are longer than the originals, meaning they are played slower. Therefore the original tracks were recorded by mistake faster than the real performance.
I will check this evening in detail.
Any remastering might have altered track length regardless of speed. It would be a simple thing to do to compare the pitch of one version vs another, which would tell you if speeded up or slowed down. Just pick the same easily found clear steady sustained note, and there are smartphone app that will do this, just use the same one on each. (This is assuming any such changes were done in the analogue domain - if digitised then speed and pitch could be altered independently of one another, though if the issue was an inaccuracy with original, a true to performance correction would alter both.) You can then even also see which is in tune, and even calculate any percentage change if interested.
I have the 1995 Sony Mastersound Gold CD and in the notes it states that the speed ‘is corrected here for the first time, using the safety tapes’. The notes also state that the original CD release used ‘later generation tapes because the original session tapes for side 1 could not be found’. The missing tapes were found in 1992, as others have stated. In 1959 ‘Columbia’s recording policy at that time was to run two tape machines simultaneously, a master and a safety. At the March 2 sessions [Side 1], the master machine was running slow, so that when the tapes were played back at the correct speed, the music was slightly faster - sharper - than the April 6 session.’ There was a further error on the jacket of the original jacket with the side 2 tracks labelled the wrong way round.
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If you Google “Mark Wilder Kind of Blue”, you get an article at Audioexchange about the many versions, original tapes, corrected speed and much more regarding Kind of Blue.
Very interesting and I hope accurate.
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Please report back your findings.
The original tracks should play faster, not because they were recorded that way. However if they were recorded at a slightly slower speed then when played back at the right speed (faster) they will be faster!
See my post above quoting notes from the Mastersound CD - side 1 was originally recorded too slow.
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