Roy Orbison - Orbison 1955-1965 [2001, 7CD Box, Bear Family BCD 16423 GL]

The ultimate Orbison! Between 1955 and 1965 Roy Orbison revolutionised popular music and these are the recordings that did it! This 7-CD set includes every recording from his golden decade! Beginning his career as a rockabilly singer on Jew-Wel and Sun Records , Roy scored one hit, 'Oooby Dooby', and left many great early rare and rockin' sides behind …'Problem Child, Down The Line, Rockhouse, Cat Called Domino'… as well as songs he wrote for Buddy Holly, like 'An Empty Cup' and 'You've Got Love'. Then Roy's song 'Claudette' (both early demo's included here for the first time!) became a hit for the Everly Brothers, and Roy went to Nashville to record first for RCA, then Monument. At Monument Records, Roy made the most perfectly realised pop music of the early-to-mid Sixties. Bruce Springsteen spoke of its "mysterious sense of longing." As Roy's contemporaries fell to the British Invasion, he went from strength to strength. All of his Monument recordings are complete here for the first time. All The hits, 'Uptown, Only The Lonely, Blue Angel, I'm Hurtin', Running Scared, Crying, Candy Man, Dream Baby, In Dreams, Falling, Mean Woman Blues, Blue Bayou, Pretty Paper, It's Over, Oh Pretty Woman', and more! All the B-sides, including songs that became big hits for other artists, like 'Today's Teardrops, Love Hurts', and 'Distant Drums'. And all the album tracks from all the Monument LPs, plus previously unissued alternate takes and rare demos! This set concludes with Roy's first MGM hit, 'Ride Away' from 1965, closing out incredible 10 years…10 years that changed the way popular music was made…

Roy Orbison:

Born: April 23, 1936, Vernon, TX
Died: December 06, 1988, Madison, TN
Active: '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s
Genres: Rock
Instrument: Vocals
Representative Albums: "16 Biggest Hits", "For the Lonely: 18 Greatest Hits", "The All-Time Greatest Hits of Roy Orbison"
Representative Songs: "Ooby Dooby", "Oh, Pretty Woman", "Crying"

Although he shared the same rockabilly roots as Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison went on to pioneer an entirely different brand of country/pop-based rock & roll in the early '60s. What he lacked in charisma and photogenic looks, Orbison made up for in spades with his quavering operatic voice and melodramatic narratives of unrequited love and yearning. In the process, he established rock & roll archetypes of the underdog and the hopelessly romantic loser. These were not only amplified by peers such as Del Shannon and Gene Pitney, but also influenced future generations of roots rockers such as Bruce Springsteen and Chris Isaak, as well as modern country stars the Mavericks.

Orbison made his first widely distributed recordings for Sun Records in 1956. Roy was a capable rockabilly singer, and had a small national hit with his first Sun single, "Ooby Dooby." But even then, he was far more comfortable as a ballad singer than as a hepped-up rockabilly jive cat. Other Sun singles met with no success, and by the late '50s he was concentrating primarily on building a career as a songwriter, his biggest early success being "Claudette" (recorded by the Everly Brothers).

After a brief, unsuccessful stint with RCA, Orbison finally found his voice with Monument Records, scoring a number-two hit in 1960 with "Only the Lonely." This established the Roy Orbison persona for good: a brooding rockaballad of failed love with a sweet, haunting melody, enhanced by his Caruso-like vocal trills at the song's emotional climax. These and his subsequent Monument hits also boasted innovative, quasi-symphonic production, with Roy's voice and guitar backed by surging strings, ominous drum rolls, and heavenly choirs of backup vocalists.

Between 1960 and 1965, Orbison would have 15 Top 40 hits for Monument, including such nail-biting mini-dramas as "Running Scared," "Crying," "In Dreams," and "It's Over." Not just a singer of tear-jerking ballads, he was also capable of effecting a tough, bluesy swagger on "Dream Baby," "Candy Man," and "Mean Woman Blues." In fact, his biggest and best hit was also his hardest-rocking: "Oh, Pretty Woman" soared to number one in late 1964, at the peak of the British Invasion.

It seemed at that time that Roy was well-equipped to survive the British onslaught of the mid-'60s. He had even toured with the Beatles in Britain in 1963, and John Lennon has admitted to trying to emulate Orbison when writing the Beatles' first British chart-topper, "Please Please Me." But Orbison's fortunes declined rapidly after he left Monument for MGM in 1965. It would be easy to say that the major label couldn't replicate the unique production values of the classic Monument singles, but that's only part of the story. Roy, after all, was still writing most of his material, and his early MGM records were produced in a style that closely approximated the Monument era. The harder truth to face was that his songs were starting to sound like lesser variations of themselves, and that contemporary trends in rock and soul were making him sound outdated.

Orbison, like many early rock greats, could always depend on large overseas audiences to pay the bills. The two decades between the mid-'60s and mid-'80s were undeniably tough ones for him, though, both personally and professionally. A late-'60s stab at acting failed miserably. In 1966, his wife died in a motorcycle accident; a couple of years later, his house burned down, two of his sons perishing in the flames. Periodic comeback attempts with desultory albums in the 1970s came to naught.

Orbison's return to the public eye came about through unexpected circumstances. In the mid-'80s, David Lynch's Blue Velvet film prominently featured "In Dreams" on its soundtrack. That led to the singer making an entire album of re-recordings of hits, with T-Bone Burnett acting as producer. The record was no substitute for the originals, but it did help restore him to prominence within the industry. Shortly afterward, he joined George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne in the Traveling Wilburys. Their successful album set the stage for Orbison's best album in over 20 years, Mystery Girl, which emulated the sound of his classic '60s work without sounding hackneyed. By the time it reached the charts in early 1989, however, Orbison was dead, claimed by a heart attack in December 1988

~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi

Tracklist Disc 1:

01 - Roy Orbison - 1956 - Ooby Dooby (The Teen Kings)
02 - Roy Orbison - 1956 - Trying To Get To You (The Teen Kings)
03 - Roy Orbison - 1956 - Ooby Dooby (Sun Master)
04 - Roy Orbison - 1956 - Go! Go! Go!
05 - Roy Orbison - 1989 - Trying To Get To You
06 - Roy Orbison - 1956 - You're My Baby
07 - Roy Orbison - 1956 - Rock House
08 - Roy Orbison - 1957 - Sweet And Easy To Love
09 - Roy Orbison - 1957 - Devil Doll
10 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - Love Dumb Baby (Fragment)
11 - Roy Orbison - 1974 - Fool's Hall Of Fame
12 - Roy Orbison - 1974 - A True Love Goodbye
13 - Roy Orbison - 1957 - Chicken Hearted
14 - Roy Orbison - 1957 - I Like Love
15 - Roy Orbison - 1988 - Mean Little Mama
16 - Roy Orbison - 1988 - Problem Child
17 - Roy Orbison - 1973 - Cat Called Domino
18 - Roy Orbison - 1984 - You Tell Me
19 - Roy Orbison - 1984 - I Give Up
20 - Roy Orbison - 1976 - One More Time
21 - Roy Orbison - 1976 - Lovestruck
22 - Roy Orbison - 1976 - The Clown
23 - Roy Orbison - 1974 - Claudette
24 - Roy Orbison - 1974 - The Cause Of It All
25 - Roy Orbison - 1988 - You're Gonna Cry
26 - Roy Orbison - 1988 - This Kind Of Love
27 - Roy Orbison - 1988 - It's Too Late
28 - Roy Orbison - 1988 - I Never Knew
29 - Roy Orbison - 1988 – Claudette





Tracklist Disc 2:

01 - Roy Orbison - 1989 - Ooby Dooby (Alt.)
02 - Roy Orbison - 1984 - Ooby Dooby (Alt.2)
03 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - Ooby Dooby (Alt.3)
04 - Roy Orbison - 1988 - Trying To Get To You (Alt.)
05 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - Chicken Hearted (Semi Spolen Vocal)
06 - Roy Orbison - 1988 - Problem Child (Alt.)
07 - Roy Orbison - 1989 - The Clown (Alt.)
08 - Roy Orbison - 1988 - This Kind Of Love
09 - Roy Orbison - 1988 - It's Too Late (Alt.)
10 - Roy Orbison - 1958 - I Was A Fool (& Ken Cook)
11 - Roy Orbison - 1958 - Seems To Me
12 - Roy Orbison - 1958 - Sweet And Innocent
13 - Roy Orbison - 1983 - I'll Never Tell
14 - Roy Orbison - 1959 - Almost Eighteen
15 - Roy Orbison - 1959 - Jolle
16 - Roy Orbison - 1982 - Paper Boy
17 - Roy Orbison - 1982 - With The Bug
18 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - Ooby Dooby (The Wink Westerners)
19 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - Hey! Miss Fannie (The Wink Westerners)
20 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - A True Love Goodbye (The Teen Kings)
21 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - An Empty Cup (The Teen Kings)
22 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - Cat Called Domino (The Teen Kings)
23 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - I Guess I'm Lonely (& Joe Melson)
24 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - You Fool You (& Joe Melson)
25 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - Velveteen Doll (& Joe Melson)
26 - Roy Orbison - 2001 - She's Okay (& Joe Melson)





Tracklist Disc 3:

01 - Roy Orbison - Ooby Dooby
02 - Roy Orbison - Racker Tacker
03 - Roy Orbison - Blue Suede Shoes
04 - Roy Orbison - Brown Eyed Handsome Man
05 - Roy Orbison - St. Louis Blues
06 - Roy Orbison - All By Myself
07 - Roy Orbison - Lawdy Miss Clawdy
08 - Roy Orbison - Jam
09 - Roy Orbison - Rock House
10 - Roy Orbison - Singing The Blues
11 - Roy Orbison - Pretend
12 - Roy Orbison - Rip It Up
13 - Roy Orbison - Trying To Get To You
14 - Roy Orbison - TK Blues
15 - Roy Orbison - Go! Go! Go!
16 - Roy Orbison - Bo Diddley
17 - Roy Orbison - Do You Remember (Talk About The Teen Kings)





Tracklist Disc 4:

01 - Roy Orbison - 1959 - Paper Boy
02 - Roy Orbison - 1989 - Double Date
03 - Roy Orbison - 1959 - With The Bug
04 - Roy Orbison - 1959 - Up Town
05 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - Raindrops
06 - Roy Orbison - 1959 - Pretty One
07 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - Blue Avenue
08 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - Only The Lonely
09 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - Here Comes That Song Again
10 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - Today's Teardrops
11 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - Blue Angel
12 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - I'll Say It's My Fault
13 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - Come Back To Me (My Love)
14 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - (I'd Be) A Legend In My Time
15 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - Bye Bye Love
16 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - Twentytwo Days
17 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - Cry
18 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - I Can't Stop Loving You
19 - Roy Orbison - 1960 - I'm Hurtin'
20 - Roy Orbison - 1983 - Darkness
21 - Roy Orbison - 1961 - Let's Make A Memory
22 - Roy Orbison - 1961 - Love Hurts
23 - Roy Orbison - 1961 - Running Scared
24 - Roy Orbison - 1961 - Nightlife (semi spoken intro)
25 - Roy Orbison - 1961 - Summer Song
26 - Roy Orbison - 1961 - Loneliness
27 - Roy Orbison - 1961 – Dance





Tracklist Disc 5:

01 - Roy Orbison - 1961 / Lana
02 - Roy Orbison - 1965 / Dance
03 - Roy Orbison - 1961 / She Wears My Ring
04 - Roy Orbison - 1961 / Crying
05 - Roy Orbison - 1963 / Sunset
06 - Roy Orbison - 1961 / The Great Pretender
07 - Roy Orbison - 1961 / Candy Man
08 - Roy Orbison - 1963 / House Without Windows
09 - Roy Orbison - 1990 / (They Call You) Gigolette
10 - Roy Orbison - 1983 / How Are Things In Paradise
11 - Roy Orbison - 1963 / (They Call You) Gigolette
12 - Roy Orbison - 1961 / Wedding Day
13 - Roy Orbison - 1983 / Yes
14 - Roy Orbison - 1965 / Let The Good Times Roll
15 - Roy Orbison - 1963 / Blue Bayou (2)
16 - Roy Orbison - 1983 / Party Heart
17 - Roy Orbison - 1962 / Evergreen
18 - Roy Orbison - 1962 / Love Star
19 - Roy Orbison - 1962 / Dream Baby
20 - Roy Orbison - 1962 / The Actress
21 - Roy Orbison - 1963 / No One Will Ever Know
22 - Roy Orbison - 1962 / The Crowd (2)
23 - Roy Orbison - 1962 / Mama
24 - Roy Orbison - 1965 / (I Get So) Sentimental
25 - Roy Orbison - 1962 / Leah
26 - Roy Orbison - 1962 / Working For The Man
27 - Roy Orbison - 1964 / Borne On The Wind
28 - Roy Orbison - 1963 / Distant Drums





Tracklist Disc 6:

01 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - Falling
02 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - Shahdaroba
03 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - In Dreams
04 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - Dream
05 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - My Prayer
06 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - Lonely Wine
07 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - Beautiful Dreamer
08 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - All I Have To Do Is Dream
09 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - Mean Woman Blues
10 - Roy Orbison - 1964 - What'd I Say
11 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - San Fernando
12 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - Mama
13 - Roy Orbison - 1963 - Pretty Paper
14 - Roy Orbison - 1990 - Almost
15 - Roy Orbison - 1964 - It's Over
16 - Roy Orbison - 1964 - Indian Wedding
17 - Roy Orbison - 1964 - Oh Pretty Woman
18 - Roy Orbison - 1964 - Yo Te Amo Maria
19 - Roy Orbison - 1965 - Only With You
20 - Roy Orbison - 1965 - Goodnight
21 - Roy Orbison - 1965 - (Say) You're My Girl (fast)
22 - Roy Orbison - 1965 - (Say) You're My Girl (slow)
23 - Roy Orbison - 1965 - Sleepy Hollow
24 - Roy Orbison - 1965 - Ride Away





Tracklist Disc 7:

01 - Roy Orbison - Oh Pretty Woman / 1965
02 - Roy Orbison - Twentytwo Days / 1965
03 - Roy Orbison - Love Hurts / 1964
04 - Roy Orbison - Nightlife / 1965
05 - Roy Orbison - (They Call You) Gigolette / 2001
06 - Roy Orbison - Borne On The Wind / 1964
07 - Roy Orbison - Pretty Paper / 2001
08 - Roy Orbison - Indian Wedding / 2001
09 - Roy Orbison - Blue Avenue / 2001
10 - Roy Orbison - Here Comes That Song Again / 2001
11 - Roy Orbison - It's Over / 2001
12 - Roy Orbison - Today's Teardrops / 2001
13 - Roy Orbison - Blue Angel / 2001
14 - Roy Orbison - I'll Say It's My Fault / 2001
15 - Roy Orbison - With The Bug (Mo 546-2) / 2001
16 - Roy Orbison - Double Date (#1,2) / 2001
17 - Roy Orbison - Double Date (#5) / 2001
18 - Roy Orbison - Double Date (#6) / 2001
19 - Roy Orbison - Paper Boy (#14,16) / 2001
20 - Roy Orbison - Paper Boy (#17) / 2001
21 - Roy Orbison - Paper Boy (#18) / 2001
22 - Roy Orbison - Paper Boy (#19) / 2001
23 - Roy Orbison - With The Bug (#1) / 2001
24 - Roy Orbison - With The Bug (#2) / 2001
25 - Roy Orbison - With The Bug (#3) / 2001
26 - Roy Orbison - With The Bug (#4) / 2001
27 - Roy Orbison - With The Bug (#9) / 2001
28 - Roy Orbison - Let's Get Together For A Coke Again (1) / 2001
29 - Roy Orbison - Let's Get Together For A Coke Again (2) / 2001
30 - Roy Orbison - Let's Get Together For A Coke Again (3) / 2001
31 - Roy Orbison - Stayed Out Too Late (1) / 2001
32 - Roy Orbison - Stayed Out Too Late (2) / 2001
33 - Roy Orbison - Things Go Better With Coke / 2001
34 - Roy Orbison - Life Is Fun When You're Refreshed (1) / 2001
35 - Roy Orbison - Life Is Fun When You're Refreshed (2) / 2001
36 - Roy Orbison - Life Is Fun When You're Refreshed (3) / 2001
37 - Roy Orbison - C.O.C.A. C.O.L.A (1) / 2001
38 - Roy Orbison - C.O.C.A. C.O.L.A (2) / 2001




All thanks go to sinicinal