Every once in a while, a music label gets it right. <\/p>\n
Roy Orbison\u2019s greatest hits have been released over and over again in every form imaginable. Lately, any Orbison concert that surfaces is released on CD, but here Monument\/Legacy decided to reach back into the Roy Orbison catalog and release on CD his first three albums for the first time.<\/p>\n
Orbison had assuredly one of the best voices in rock history, though time has not been as kind to him as it has to his Sun labelmates Elvis and Johnny Cash. Beginning his career on the legendary label in the mid-50s, Orbison released two singles for RCA in 1959. Switching to the Nashville-based Monument label in late 1959, he would release his first album, Lonely And Blue,<\/i> in 1960. <\/p>\n
Included are his first three Top 40 singles co-written by Joe Melson, who would form a lasting creative relationship with Orbison. As a writing team they would produce hundreds of songs. <\/p>\n
\u201cOnly The Lonely\u201d became Roy Orbison\u2019s first major hit and would set the tone for many of his best songs to come; you remember it by the slowly building vocals that can’t seem to go any higher, but then hit another registry. \u201cBlue Angel\u201d is a midtempo ballad featuring vocals with minimal instrumental backing that emphasizes the purity of Orbison\u2019s voice. \u201cI\u2019m Hurtin\u201d is also here, though the ballad is not as strong as some of the other tunes here. <\/p>\n
At this point in his career Orbison did not have enough original material to fill a whole album and so fell back upon the practice of the day by covering popular hits. He does a good interpretation of \u201cI Can\u2019t Stop Loving You,\u201d namely because it\u2019s interesting to hear Orbison\u2019s upper registry as opposed to Gibson\u2019s country bass. “I\u2019d Be A Legend In My Time\u201d is basically filler, but Orbison could pull off singing \u201cRow Row Your Boat\u201d and make it sound good.<\/p>\n
The old Everly Brothers song \u201cBye Bye Love\u201d is just okay, but the country standard \u201cCry\u201d was made for Orbison\u2019s voice. Gene Pitney\u2019s \u201cTwenty-Two Days\u201d was at best an odd choice. <\/p>\n
Lonely And Blue <\/i>contains four bonus songs. Only the pop standard \u201cUptown\u201d adds anything to the overall quality of the album. Orbison takes the song in a rockabilly direction and is a unique interpretation of a song that has been recorded thousands of times. <\/p>\n
It is nice to see Lonely And Blue <\/i>finally rescued from undeserved obscurity. The album set the table for Orbison to establish himself as a powerful vocalist with a unique sound, and this is a very credible first effort as well as an excellent place to visit a young singer at the beginning of his career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":29105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5919],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-40625","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-roy-orbison","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40625"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40625"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}