Roy Kelton Orbison 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.
Donald Eugene Gibson was an American songwriter and country musician. A Country Music Hall of Fame inductee, Gibson wrote such country standards as "Sweet Dreams" and "I Can't Stop Loving You", and enjoyed a string of country hits from 1957 into the mid-1970s.
Joe Melson is an American singer and a BMI Award-winning songwriter best known for his collaborations with Roy Orbison, including "Only the Lonely" and "Crying", which are both in the Grammy Hall of Fame and have both been included in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Melson was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018.
Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night is a 1988 Cinemax television special originally broadcast on January 3, 1988, starring triple Hall of Fame inductee rock/pop singer/songwriter Roy Orbison and backing band TCB Band with special guests including Bruce Springsteen, k.d. lang and others. The special was filmed entirely in black and white. After the broadcast the concert was released on VHS and Laserdisc. A live album was released in 1989.
John David "J. D." Souther is an American singer, songwriter, and actor. He has written and co-written songs recorded by Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles. Souther is probably best known for his songwriting abilities, especially in the field of country rock. He co-wrote some of the biggest hits for the Eagles, including "Best of My Love", "Victim of Love", "Heartache Tonight", and "New Kid in Town". "How Long", which appears on the Eagles' Long Road Out of Eden, was written by Souther and originally recorded on his first solo album in 1972. Souther recorded two major hit songs in his solo career: "You're Only Lonely" (1979) and "Her Town Too" (1981), a duet with longtime friend James Taylor.
There Is Only One Roy Orbison is the seventh album recorded by Roy Orbison, and his first for MGM Records, released in July 1965. It features his studio recording of "Claudette", an Orbison-penned song which had become a hit for The Everly Brothers in 1958. Ironically, at the time he recorded the song in 1965, he had divorced his wife Claudette, who had inspired the lyrics. Orbison later re-recorded the song for In Dreams: The Greatest Hits in 1985. The single taken from the album was "Ride Away", which reached no. 25 in the US charts, no. 12 in Australia and no. 34 in the UK. Cash Box described "Ride Away" as a "rhythmic teen-angled ode about a somewhat ego-oriented lad who cuts-out on romance."
Memphis is the seventeenth album recorded by Roy Orbison, and his tenth for MGM Records. The album was released in November 1972.
The Great Songs of Roy Orbison is an album recorded by Roy Orbison for MGM Records that was released in the United States in February 1970.
In Dreams: The Greatest Hits is a two-record album set by Roy Orbison songs released in 1987 on Virgin Records. It was produced by Orbison and Mike Utley, except for the song "In Dreams", produced by Orbison with T-Bone Burnett and film director David Lynch. All songs are re-recordings by Orbison from 1986, except "In Dreams" from April 1987.
I'm Still in Love With You is the nineteenth album by Roy Orbison, recorded for Mercury Records and according to the authorised biography of Roy Orbison, it was released in September 1975.
"Crying" is a song written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson for Orbison's third studio album of the same name (1962). Released in 1961, it was a number 2 hit in the US for Orbison and was covered in 1978 by Don McLean, whose version went to number 1 in the UK in 1980.
"Only the Lonely (Know the Way I Feel)" is a 1960 song written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson. Orbison's recording of the song, produced by Fred Foster for Monument Records, was the first major hit for the singer. It was described by The New York Times as expressing "a clenched, driven urgency". Released as a 45 rpm single by Monument Records in May 1960, "Only the Lonely" went to No. 2 on the United States Billboard pop music charts on 25 July 1960 (blocked by Brenda Lee's "I'm Sorry") and No. 14 on the Billboard R&B charts. "Only the Lonely" reached number one in the United Kingdom, a position it achieved on 20 October 1960, staying there for two weeks (out of a total of 24 weeks spent on the UK singles chart from 28 July 1960). According to The Authorized Roy Orbison, "Only the Lonely" was the longest charting single of Orbison's career. Personnel on the original recording included Orbison's drummer Larry Parks, plus Nashville's regulars, Floyd Cramer on piano, Bob Moore on bass, and Hank Garland and Harold Bradley on guitars, Joe Melson and the Anita Kerr Singers on backing vocals. Drummer Buddy Harman played on the rest of the songs on the session.
"In Dreams" is a song composed and sung by singer Roy Orbison. An operatic rock ballad of lost love, it was released as a single on Monument Records in February 1963. It became the title track on the album In Dreams, released in July of the same year. The song has a unique structure in seven musical movements in which Orbison sings through two octaves, beyond the range of most rock and roll singers.
"I Can't Stop Loving You" is a popular song written and composed by country singer, songwriter, and musician Don Gibson, who first recorded it on December 3, 1957, for RCA Victor Records. It was released in 1958 as the B-side of "Oh, Lonesome Me", becoming a double-sided country hit single. At the time of Gibson's death in 2003, the song had been recorded by more than 700 artists, most notably by Ray Charles, whose recording reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart.
"Claudette" is a 1958 song which reached number 1 in the UK Singles Chart that year in a recording by the Everly Brothers. It was the first notable success as a songwriter for Roy Orbison, who named it after his first wife. Orbison also recorded his own version of the song. Although originally released as the B-side to the Everly Brothers' number 1 hit "All I Have to Do is Dream", their recording of "Claudette" reached number 30 in its own right, and the two songs were jointly listed at number 1 in the UK.
"(I'd Be) A Legend in My Time" is a song written and recorded by Don Gibson in 1960. It appeared as the B-side of his hit "Far Far Away", from the album Sweet Dreams. Gibson re-recorded the song on the 1972 album Country Green.
"It's Too Soon to Know" is an American doo-wop ballad by Deborah Chessler (1923–2012), performed first by The Orioles. It was number one on the American Rhythm and blues charts in November 1948. It is considered by some to be the first "rock and roll" song, and described by others as "the first rhythm and blues vocal group harmony recording".
Roy Orbison's Sun recordings were made by Orbison at Sun Studio with producer Sam Phillips. Sun Records was established in 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee, and during an eight-year period Phillips recorded such artists as Roy Orbison, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Ike Turner, Rufus Thomas, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Harold Jenkins, and Charlie Rich. The musicians signed at Sun Records made music that laid the foundation of rock and roll in the 20th century.
One of the Lonely Ones is a posthumous Roy Orbison album which was released on December 4, 2015. It is his 24th and final studio album. Orbison recorded it in 1969. The album, which Orbison recorded surreptitiously in the aftermath of his wife Claudette's death in a motorcycle accident and the death of his two sons in a house fire 2 years later, was long believed lost.
Alexander Orbison, also known as Orbi, is an American drummer, writer, director, and film producer. He is the president of Still Working Music Group, a publishing company. He is also president and co-founder of Roy's Boys LLC, which manages the legacy of his father, musician Roy Orbison; the organization also includes his brothers, Roy Orbison Jr. and Wesley Orbison.
