"Runaway" by Del Shannon was number #1 from four weeks in 1961. His song was 'pitch corrected'

Here's the story:

Quote from "The Riff" by Frank Mastropolo 3.25.21

Harry Balk of Detroit’s Talent Artists arranged for the pair to record “Runaway” in January 1961 at New York’s Bell Sound Studios with Balk producing.

(Max)Crook brought his Musitron from Grand Rapids to New York, where he set it up before skeptical engineers at Bell, then one of the first four-track studios in the world. Shannon’s website explains that when Balk returned to Detroit, he felt that Shannon’s singing was flat and should be re-recorded. Instead, Bell engineers sped up Shannon’s vocals to nearly one-and-a-half times its original speed.

When Shannon heard the way his voice was manipulated, Balk recalled, he was angry.

“He said, ‘Harry, that doesn’t even sound like me!’ I just remember saying, ‘Yeah, but Del, nobody knows what the hell you sound like!’ Two weeks after its release, forget it! It’s selling 50,000. It’s selling 60,000. Eventually, it topped off selling 80,000 records a day. After ‘Runaway’ became a million-seller, Del came in and thanked me for what I had done.”

End Quote.

That was a year before Willie Nelson signed his first major label recording contract, with Liberty Records.

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