Pros: Excellent clarity. Very good range. One of the top oldies collections! STEREO! Legendary performer!
Cons: Not in chronological order.
The Bottom Line: For sheer musicality and entertainment by ROCK's Mr. nice guy this is one oldies compilation that should NOT be overlooked and the price is right!
sam-pro's Full Review: All-Time Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 & 2 by Roy Orbison
Before becoming a Traveling Wilbury and recording his final offering to the world of hit music..."You Got It", one Mr. Roy Orbison spent a good deal of his lifetime experiencing heartwrenching tragedy and making wonderful recordings that indeed to this day are considered monumental [I had to get that in!]. Certainly his early days of rock n' roll music were spent with the legendary SUN Records while later recording for the famed MGM label. But the MONUMENT days were the best of the best for him and those of us fortunate to growup during this era in ROCK and POP!
Roy Orbison was so well loved in Great Britain that on one particular occasion he opened for the Beatles and received so many curtain calls that the Fab Four told him..."Yankee go home". The friendship between the artists grew from there and Roy told them not to worry but keep their hair long and they'll be "just fine" in America. This was before their 1964 landing in the USA!
The album for review here..."The All-Time Greatest Hits Of Roy Orbison" is a CBS SPECIAL PRODUCTS effort to remaster his best written and performed MONUMENT RECORDS material and it works to perfection! The sun-glassed guitarist/singer has indeed left us with some pretty polished time tested tunes that touched our eager record buying hearts with a flavor of unique styling that has yet to be claimed by anyone else in the business. Certainly, Gene Pitney comes the closest! Ah!...but that is a subject for another day and another review! The great Orbison COUNTRY/ROCK/BLUES ballads are seemingly endless!
1. "Only The Lonely (Know The Way I Feel)"-Huge hit featuring the Candymen...Roy's backup group.
2. "Leah"-Shows Roy's range with this tragic love story!
3. "In Dreams (I Walk With You)"The #13 1963 hit starts off with "A candy-colored clown they call the sandman" and then proceeds to tell the tale of the lonely man and his make believe encounter with the angel that he so admires.
4. "Uptown"-and an "upbeat" hit!
5. "It's Over"-Tremendous SPRING, 1964 TOP TEN hit that somehow survived the Beatles' assault on the TOP TEN of the day and one of my personal favorites by Orbison! Love the orchestration and climactic finish!
6. "Crying"- Simply one of the greatest and most powerful ROCK anthems ever created that has been covered by so many artists over the years! An emotional triumph!
7. "Dream Baby"-A great #1 bluesy country styled SMASH!!
8. "Blue Angel"- The Candymen provide the enhancement of Roy's singing on this great lost hit. Very similar to TRACK ONE.
9. "Working For The Man"-It's a hard knock life type of rockin' hit.
10. "Candy Man"-Country styled POPROCK/BLUES that served as an inspiration for naming Roy's backup group. Love that harmonica!
11. "Running Scared"-A #1 hit that told a story of how a young man feels as he loves a beautiful girl [who may choose her former lover over him] that is only seemingly out of his league!
12. "Falling"-There's that wide but tender Orbison range again.
13. "Love Hurts"-Hit that was covered by Nazareth years later.
14. "Shadaroba"-Haunting melody!
15. "I'm Hurtin'"-More of ROCK's best vocalist of the 60's.
16. "Mean Woman Blues"-Hated this song at first but have grown to love this #13 1963 NYC hit over the years! Go figure!
17. "Pretty Paper"-And a pretty Christmas song.
18. "Crowd, The"-More of that "Running Scared" sound and a wonderful #20 lost hit!
19. "Blue Bayou"-Wow! The opening bass riff is pretty impressive! Great follow-up to "It's Over"! Covered by Linda Ronstadt later on. I personally prefer Orbison's uptempo version!
20. "Oh, Pretty Woman"-This 1964 #1 hit was just what the doctor ordered for Roy's career at the time and remains as one of radio's most requested oldies! The drivin' drum and Orbison's purrin' vocals highlight the hit. "Come with me baby" had to be changed to "Come to me baby" to satisfy the censors.
Roy Orbison's "crying" vocal range on each of his heartbreaking love songs does not leave one feeling gloomy or discouraged but rather touched by a sense of awareness of the human condition and real life situations. Yet, Orbison makes it very entertaining also! How he accomplished this is a magic that only he and God above understand!
As a songwriter he certainly understood the common man's heart felt situations and as a singer this gave him an advantage as he could convey the self-penned message to the listener honestly. He also knew how to climax a song properly as opposed to the popular "fade"!
As stated earlier his SUN recordings are not included in this collection e.g. "Ooby Dooby" nor his MGM hits "Cry Softly To Me Lonely One" and "Pistolero". Those obscure hits can be found elsewhere.
Certainly Roy's backup group...The Candymen were to Orbison as the Jordanaires were to ELVIS. Without them, some of the hits might not have worked so well. The Candymen did record their own record in the MID SIXTIES for Monument with a mild TOP 50 hit..."Georgia Pines" that you just gotta hear! Tony Joe White covered said hit a bit later.
I could spirt out endlessly about this classic nice guy of Rock n' Roll and his tragic witness of his family burning to death in a fire or how he wrote so much for so many or even how he guided the Beatles in the early days of their career. But I won't go into the details of that stuff as you can certainly pickup on the stuff elsewhere.
What really matters here is that before he passed away over ten years ago this man left us with some of the finest recorded entertainment. CBS has remastered the Monument tapes in Rhino-like fashion to perfection resulting in one of the greatest compilations ever!
My only critcism of the album is minor. The well compiled 60's hits are NOT in chronological oder. I purchased my copy of this particular CD sometime ago for a very decent price of $12 and now it is offered for even less! Regardless of which price you may pay, it is simply A STEAL!!!!!!
You owe it to yourself to checkout one of ROCK's most influential figures regardless of your age. 60's OLDIES collectors...rejoice! The "emotion" of the man is captured very nicely here. The sound quality is superb and the ridiculously low price is right...you cannot lose on this modest investment! You ain't heard STEREO or ORBISON 'til you've listened to this CD!
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