Roy Orbison The Big O (LP)

(Magnum Force) 10 tracks - Original 'Sun' recordings

On the 11th June 1960, Roy Orbison's Only The Lonely entered the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, it climbed to the Number Two spot the following month and remained in the chart for twenty one weeks. The recording entered the U.K. Top Fifty on 28th July, but dropped off the list the following week. In August it reappeared on the chart where it spent twenty three weeks and climbed to Number One. The record gave Orbison his first Gold Disc and heralded the start of a decade during which he scored twenty seven U.S. hits, thirty U.K. chart entries (including ten Top 10 hits) and won a total of twelve Gold Discs.

 Orbison's spectacular success was based on a number of factors. At the core of his appeal lay his material, most of which was self penned. His compositions explored the nature of love with a strong preoccupation for the heartache and desolation it could produce. Unlike most of his comtemporaries who catered solely for the anguish of the teenage audience of the early Sixties, Orbison's maturity and his country and western background enabled him to create songs which appealed to older people as well as the adolescents who made up most of the singles market at the time. Country composers had never traditionally pitched their songs at teenagers although the plaintive lyrics often appealed to that age group. The work of such lyricists as Fred Rose, Ernest Tubb Floyd Tillman and Hank Williams appealed to country fans of all ages. It was not until the rock and roll revolution of the Fifties that such Nashville based writers as Felice and Boudleaux Bryant made conscious attempts to write teen orientated lyrics. Although Orbison made a few concessions, most of his compositions retained the universal appeal of the older country songs and were similar in style to those of Don Gibson who had achieved the same effect in the late Fifties with such songs as I Can't Stop Loving You, Legend In My Time, Oh Lonesome Me and Blue Blue Day. Orbison's solo compositions included Falling, In Dreams and Working For The Man and, in collaboration with Bill Dees, he wrote Oh Pretty Woman and It's Over. His most successful teaming was with Joe Melson who he had met at Odessa College, Texas in the early Fifties. The partnership produced a string of million sellers including Only The Lonely, Blue Angel, Running Scared, Crying and Blue Bayou. The lasting appeal of Orbison's work has been confirmed by the number of times the songs have been recorded by other artists. In 1979 Linda Ronstadr scored with Blue Bayou and in 1980 Don McLean topped the charts with Crying.

Another reason for Roy Orbison's success was his superb live performances and the overall effect of his image, which seemed to echo the haunting despair which penetrated all his work, including his apparently optimistic songs. In real life Roy Orbison was a very shy man and his large dark glasses and sombre clothing appeared to be a veil behind which he hid himself from the world. On stage he exuded an incredible charisma, he hardly moved — he simply stood with his guitar and allowed his enormous vocal range to convey his message. His whole stage persona seemed to be an extension of the themes of his songs — a whole life of tragedy and despair captured in one brooding figure. His audience loved it and the Big O's was indeed one of the most staggeringly powerful images of the pop scene in the Sixties. The man behind the image was been Roy Kelton Orbison in Vernon, Texas on 23rd April 1936 and brought up three hundred miles away in the town of Wink where his father worked on the oil rigs. His father taught him to play guitar when he was six and at the age of eight he was performing regularly on a local radio station. In his teens he became the leader of a western swing outfit entitled The Wink Westerners. The group built up a strong following in the Wink area and landed their own programme on radio station KVWC. In 1952, at the International Lions Conclave in Chicago, Roy appeared as the musical representative of the state of Texas. Soon afterwards while pursuing a geology course at North Texas State College, Roy met an up and coming singer called Pat Boone and began to consider the possibilities of a career as a full time entertainer.

By 1954 Roy Orbison had a television show in Odessa, Texas and towards the end of that year the success of an Elvis Presley concert in the area and the growth in the popularity, among white teenagers, of rockabilly and rhythm and blues records, caused him to reconsider the style and repertoire of his band. In 1955 they changed their name to the Teen Kings and began to play the sort of music that appealed to the teenage market. At College Roy met two fellow students Wade Moore and Dick Penner (who were later to record for Sam Phillips's Sun label as Wade and Dick) and heard their composition Ooby Dooby. The Teen Kings hired Norman Petty 's studio in Clovis, New Mexico and used it to record Ooby Dooby and Trying To Get To You.

Petty would later record Buddy Holly's most celebrated sides in the same studio. Ooby Dooby was released on the Je-Wel label but received limited exposure. The group re-recorded the song for Columbia who rejected it, but released a version by Sid King and his band for the rockabilly market. In the meantime Imperial acquired Trying To Get To You and released it as the flip of So Long, Good Luck and Goodbye by Weldon Rogers, who was credited with both sides. Orbison was convinced of the potential of Ooby Dooby and sent the tape of the record to Sam Phillips in Memphis. The legendary producer was impressed by what he heard and immediately sent for the Teen Kings to re-record the song, which coupled with the Orbison composition Go Go Go, was released on the famous Sun label in May 1956. The record was credited to Roy Orbison and the Teen Kings because in view of his success with Elvis and Johnny Cash, Phillips favoured the idea of promoting male solo artists.

Ooby Dooby went on to become one of Sun's biggest hits, selling half a million copes and reaching Number 59 in the Billboard Hot 100. A classic rocker, the song has been covered by many notable artists including Jerry Lee Lewis and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Go Go Go which Orbison has said was written with the assistance of Johnny Cash, has also become a rock roll standard; under the title Down The Line it has been recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis, Ricky Nelson and many others.

In the eighteen months following the success of Ooby Dooby, Roy toured extensively with fellow Sun artists Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Warren Smith, Sonny Burgess and Billy Lee Riley. He also had three more excellent singles released on the label. You're My Baby, written by Johnny Cash, was released in SepteMber 1956. Sweet and Easy To Love, was issued in January 1957; its flipside was Devil Doll, one or Orbison's most effective ballads. Finally, December 1957 saw the release of Chicken Hearted. During this period he also recorded a number of sides that were nor released at the time. Several of these saw the light of day in 1961 on the Sun album "Roy Orbison At The Rmkhouse". The previously unissued tracks include You're Gonna Cry and I Never Knew (both written by Roy but credited to Sam Phillips who had bought the rights to several Orbison compositions) and a superb interpretation of the Chuck Willis rhythm and blues hit It's Too Late.

Roy left Sun in 1958 by which time his songwriting abilities had become recognised wirh the Everly Brothers' recording of Claudette which appeared as the flipside of their million selling All I Have To Do Is Dream. The same year Wesley Rose signed him as a staff writer for the giant Acuff-Rose publishing company. Soon afterwards Rose arranged for him to meet RCA producer Chet Atkins who signed him to the label for whom he recorded a single without success. His next move took him to Fred Foster's new Monument label; his third release was Only The Lonely and the rest, as they say, is history. After a string of spectacular successes with Monument Roy joined MGM in 1965 in a million dollar deal. Although he continued his chart success with his new label Orbison's sales never repeated those of his Monument recordings. Apart from his falling record sales, Roy's career was further damaged by his film debut in a lightweight MGM production entitled The Fastest Guitar Alive.

In 1966 the doom which psulated was reflected in a real life tragedy when his wife Claudette was killed in a motorcycle accident. Soon afterwards his moving but morbid recording of Don Gibson's Too Soon To Know, gave him his last U.K. Top Ten entry. Two years later, while Roy was undertaking a sell out British tour, two of his sons were killed in a house fire. In 1969 Roy scored his last British chart hit to date with Penny Arcade.
Throughout the Seventies he remained a regular tour attraction although his career was interrupted by open heart surgery towards the end of the decade. In 1976 he renewed his recording links with Fred Foster on a fine Monument album entitled Regeneration and in 1979 he recorded an album, Laminar Flow, for Asylum. The following year he reached Number 55-on the U.S. Billboard pop charts with That Lavin' Feeling Again, a duet with Emmylou Haris which was featured in the film Roadie. In 1982 he was one of the star attractions at Wembley's International Festival of Country Music, where he received a tremendous reception from the audience. In 1985, along with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, he returned to Sam Phillips's old Sun studio and cut an album for producer Chip Moman.
The material on this album is a reminder of the standard of excellence that Roy Orbison achieved during his spell with Sun. The collection includes the hit version of Ooby Dooby and such other great up-tempo offerings as Go Go Go (a.k.a. Down The Line), You're My Baby and Domino as well as the Sun cut of Trying To Get To You and Devil Doll and It's Too Late which showcase the ballad styling that was to make him such a star a few years later.
Liner Notes Bill Williams

Roy Orbison

Born on 23 4th 1936 in Vernon, Texas.
Died on 6.12th 1988 in Tennesse.

 

Roy Orbison

The man with the unmistakable voice began as a rockabilly singer, then went as a staff composer (at Acuff - Rose) to Nashville. From his contract with Sun Records, he bought himself free, signed with Monument, where he began the assembly line production fate pregnant pain ballads. Among his classics and evergreens include 'Crying', 'Only The Lonely', 'Dream Baby', 'In Dreams', 'It's Over' and of course 'Pretty Woman' (a total of 29 US-Hits 1956-1967).

1966 accident his wife Claudette deadly on a motorcycle, only two years later both Orbison's sons died in a house fire. On 25 3 1969 Roy married in Nashville, the 19 year old Barbara Anne Wellhonen from Bielefeld (two common sons: Roy Kelton Jr., born in 1970, and Alexander, born 1974). During the 70 years it has been quiet around the superstar, who had to undergo a dangerous heart surgery.

End of the 80 he received a new contract with Virgin, again bubbled the hits, and Orbison was next to George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty solid Roy ORBISON Mm member of the Traveling Wilburys. At 6:12. In 1988, he died 'in Nashville a heart attack, his designated successor at the Wilburys, Del Shannon, shot himself.

Orbison's only German-language single is the mega-Rarität- both original titles were übersungen of the production line of Wolf Kabitzky on 06.09.1963 in Hamburg Teldec studio in the Easter Road with German lyrics. 1987 was recorded 'The Big O' in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.

From the Bear Family Book - 1000 pinpricks of Bernd Matheja - BFB10025 -

 

Roy Orbison

Historians love to write about how Roy Orbison got started in the music business on the wrong foot, being forced to cut rock 'n' roll until he found his niche with the sort of orchestrated ballads that would cement his place in the Hall of Fame. 

While it is true that Roy himself preferred the softer songs and the pop ballads, and certainly that is where he found his greatest chart success, one thing cannot be denied—Roy Orbison's veins pulsed with the blood of a rocker. Although he always denied it, he was great at rocking, and left behind some of the best-loved rockabilly tracks of all time.

 This collection is perhaps the first of its kind, the first to collect all of Roy's best 'rockin'' material from the different periods in his career—from the early days at Sun Records and at the Norman Petty studios, to the short-lived days as an RCA Victor artist in the late 50s, and the few but fertile rockers that Roy cut in his golden days for Monument Records in the early 1960s.

 When an artist finds such massive success with a radically different style such as Roy Orbison did with his pop hits in the 60s, it is easy to write off early efforts with a dismissive wave of the hand. In fact, in doing the research for these liner notes, I was shocked at how nearly every single book or article about Roy Orbison regurgitated the same details about Roy's early rocking period, usually in a few short paragraphs. The thought occurred to me that had Roy not gone on to record those massive pop hits, he would have had the sort of attention paid to his rockabilly sides as the other greats of Sun Records—Carl Perkins, Billy Lee Riley, Sonny Burgess, Warren Smith, and others who have had every minute detail of their 1950s activities researched and obsessed over time and again.

The fact of the matter is that Roy was another teenager in the mid-1950s who traveled to see Elvis Presley play and got swept up in the fury—women, fame, attention, and Roy's own admission that his only goal was "a Cadillac and a diamond ring by the age of 21."Whether or not he was teen idol material mattered not—for deep in his soul Roy felt the calling of wild bop music known as rock 'n' roll. 

Much has also been written about how unlikely a star Roy Orbison was. True, back in the 1950s as it is today, looks mattered over talent in the pop business, and Roy Orbison was not exactly an attractive man. Born albino, he suffered the eyesight problems of albinism, and in fact in the early days (before he wore glasses on stage) many thought Roy was blind because he had to be led up to the microphone. But he dyed his hair a deep jet black, bought himself the finest hepcat clothes that money could buy, equipped himself with top-of-the-line equipment (teenage Roy had a Les Paul 'black beauty' guitar—the most expensive solidbody Gibson made—and a Ray Butts Echosonic Amp like Scotty Moore—also the most expensive custom-ordered amplifier one could own at the time), and made up his mind that he was going to be a rock 'n' roll star, looks be damned.

In the music business, there has always been a great divide between the gifted and the determined, and Roy was both. The determination paid off—in fact the stubborn Roy stuck at it through high and low times throughout his 40-year stint in the music business. How many artists can say they started off with a hit on their first record, then sank so low as to eat rolled up balls of cornmeal and water (as Roy did between his Sun days and the pop hits), found top 40 success and made a million dollars, lost his wife to a motorcycle accident and two sons to a house fire, then wound up getting inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and having a top 10 hit just as he died? The story of Roy Orbison is a story of perseverance and dogged determination more than anything else.

West Texas is precisely the sort of place to breed a determined young man like Roy Orbison. Hot, dusty, and flat—these are the only goodthings that can be said about a place like Wink, Texas, where Roy was raised. Born in April 23, 1936 to hard working parents (Roy's dad Orbie Lee was a rigger in the oilfields), Roy was the classic outcast, a subject that later permeated his hits like Only The Lonelyand In Dreams.

Roy had a good head on his shoulders...