Roy Kelton Orbison (April 23, 1936 – December 6, 1988) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician known for his impassioned singing style, complex song structures, and dark, emotional ballads. His music was described by critics as operatic, earning him the nicknames “The Caruso of Rock” and “The Big O.” Many of Orbison’s songs conveyed vulnerability at a time when most male rock-and-roll performers chose to project machismo. He performed while standing motionless and wearing black clothes to match his dyed black hair and dark sunglasses.
Born in Texas, Orbison began singing in a rockabilly and country-and-western band as a teenager. He was signed by Sam Phillips of Sun Records in 1956, but enjoyed his greatest success with Monument Records. From 1960 to 1966, 22 of Orbison’s singles reached the Billboard Top 40. He wrote or co-wrote almost all of his own Top 10 hits, including “Only the Lonely” (1960), “Running Scared” (1961), “Crying” (1961), “In Dreams” (1963), and “Oh, Pretty Woman” (1964).
After the mid-1960s, Orbison suffered a number of personal tragedies and his career faltered. He experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s following the success of several cover versions of his songs. In 1988, he co-founded the Traveling Wilburys (a rock supergroup) with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne. Orbison died of a heart attack in December 1988 at age 52. One month later, his song “You Got It” (1989) was released as a solo single, becoming his first hit to reach the US and UK Top 10 in nearly 25 years.
Orbison’s honors include inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989, and the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2014. He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and five other Grammy Awards. Rolling Stone placed him at number 37 on its list of the “Greatest Artists of All Time” and number 13 on its list of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time”. In 2002, Billboard magazine listed him at number 74 on its list of the Top 600 recording artists. (wikipedia)
And here´s a nice compilation with some of his best songs.
A add my favourite Roy Orbinson song “I Got It”.
Personnel:
Roy Orbinson (vocals, guitar)
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many, many studio musicians
Tracklist:
01. Oh Pretty Woman (Dees/Orbison) 2.57
02. Running Scared (Melson/Orbison) 2.10
03. Falling (Orbison) 2.22
04. Love Hurts (Bryant) 2.27
05. Mean Woman Blues (de Metrius) 2.25
06. I Can’t Stop Loving You (Gibson) 2.49
07. The Crowd (Melson/Orbison) 2.22
08. Blue Bayou (Melson/Orbison) 2.30
09. Borne On The Wind (Dees/Orbison) 2.52
10. Lana (Melson/Orbison) 2.52
11. Only The Lonely (Melson/Orbison) 2.30
12. It’s Over (Dees/Orbison) 2.49
13. Crying (Melson/Orbison) 2.47
14. Pretty Paper (Nelson) 2.44
15. All I Have To Do Is Dream (Bryant) 2.24
16. Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream) (Walker) 2.34
17. Blue Angel (Melson/Orbison) 2.43
18. Working For The Man (Orbison) 2.27
19. Candy Man (Ross/Neil) 2.46
20. In Dreams (Orbison) 2.51
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21. You Got It (Lynne/Orbison/Petty) 3.31
More from Roy Orbinson:
And here is one of these countless compilation albums with “Greatest Love Song” …
You’ve Got Mail is a 1998 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Nora Ephron and starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Inspired by the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László (which had earlier been adapted in 1940 as The Shop Around the Corner and in 1949 as In the Good Old Summertime),[3] it was co-written by Nora and Delia Ephron. It tells the story of two people in an online romance who are unaware they are also business rivals. It marked the third pairing of Hanks and Ryan, who previously appeared together in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), the latter directed by Ephron.
Cry Softly Lonely One is the twelfth music album recorded by Roy Orbison, and his sixth for MGM Records. The album was released in October 1967 and included two singles: “Communication Breakdown” and the title tune, both of which were minor hits in the States early that year. “Communication Breakdown” did much better in Australia, where it reached #9 in February. According to the official Roy Orbison discography by Marcel Riesco,[2] the London Records release (non U.S.) of this album featured the extra track “Just One Time”. (by wikipedia)
There never was a supergroup more super than the Traveling Wilburys. They had Jeff Lynne, the leader of ELO; they had Roy Orbison, the best pop singer of the ’60s; they had Tom Petty, the best roots rocker this side of Bruce Springsteen; they had a Beatle and Bob Dylan, for crying out loud! It’s impossible to picture a supergroup with a stronger pedigree than that (all that’s missing is a Rolling Stone), but in another sense it’s hard to call the Wilburys a true supergroup, since they arrived nearly two decades after the all-star craze of the ’70s peaked, and they never had the self-important air of nearly all the other supergroups. That, of course, was the key to their charm: they were a group of friends that fell together easily, almost effortlessly, to record a B-side for a single for George Harrison, then had such a good time they stuck around to record a full album, which became a hit upon its 1988 release. The Traveling Wilburys was big enough to convince the group to record a second album, cheerfully and incongruously titled Vol. 3, two years later despite the death of Orbison. Like most sequels, the second didn’t live up to expectations, and by the time it and its predecessor drifted out of print in the mid-’90s, with the rights reverting to Harrison, nobody much noticed. A few years later, though, it soon became apparent that the Wilburys records — mainly, the debut, widely beloved thanks to its two hits, “Handle With Care” and “End of the Line” — were out of print, and they soon became valuable items as the Harrison estate dragged its heels on a reissue. Finally, the two albums were bundled up as a two-CD set simply called The Traveling Wilburys and reissued with a DVD containing a documentary and all the videos in the summer of 2007 (there is also a deluxe edition containing a longer, lavish booklet).
Mystery Girl is the twenty-second album by American singer Roy Orbison. It was completed in November 1988, a month before his death at the age of 52, and released on the Virgin record label in February 1989. It includes the hit single “You Got It”, which was co-written by Orbison and his Traveling Wilburys bandmates Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty, and “She’s a Mystery to Me”, written by Bono and The Edge. The album was a critical and commercial success; it peaked at number 5 on the Billboard 200 in the United States, the highest position Orbison had achieved on that chart, and number 2 on the UK Albums Chart.
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