ALBUM: Roy Orbison, ‘The Ultimate Collection’
Last year, a previously unissued Roy Orbison album from 1969 was released called One of the Lonely Ones. The title was apt — not just because it encapsulates Orbison’s persona as a perpetual loner who loves but always loses, but also because it reflects his individual place in pop music.
In an era dominated by teen idols and simplistic pop, Orbison was writing and singing brooding ballads influenced by classical music with a voice so operatic in its range, power, and emotional intensity that he was nicknamed “the Caruso of rock.”
While other American artists were vanishing from the pop charts in the wake of the British Invasion, Orbison not only earned his biggest hit (“Oh, Pretty Woman”), but also managed to invade Britain himself, racking up two UK #1 hits in 1964 — the only American who accomplished this feat.
Nearly a quarter of a century later, he became the rare musician to mount a successful comeback that recaptured his initial popularity, earning a worldwide Top 10 hit and joining the supergroup of supergroups, the Traveling Wilburys.
The new single-disc compilation, The Ultimate Collection, touches on the highlights of Orbison’s 30-year career in music, from his first rockabilly single, “Ooby Dooby,” in 1956, to recordings released after his sudden death in 1988, including the posthumous UK hit “I Drove All Night” from 1992.
The heart of the collection, however, consists of the singles from his period at Monument Records in the early ’60s. This is the era where he established his orchestrated sound and morose, lovelorn character, charting an astonishing 19 Top 40 hits between 1960 and early 1965, nine of which made the US Top 10 and two of which topped the charts.
Orbison’s first major success for Monument, the #2 pop hit “Only the Lonely,” set the template for the essential Roy Orbison record: lushly orchestrated and beautiful sounding, but laced with a deep vein of isolation and grief unlike anything else on the pop charts.
But while Orbison is most often associated with these sort of haunting ballads, such as “Crying,” “Running Scared,” “In Dreams,” and “It’s Over,” he also equally adept at lighter, country-flavored rockers like “Dream Baby,” “Mean Woman Blues,” and, most famously, “Oh, Pretty Woman,” all of which are represented here.
In 1965, at the peak of his career, Orbison moved from Monument to MGM intending to benefit from the additional support that the major label could offer him. While he earned three more Top 40 hits at MGM (including “Ride Away,” included here and recently featured in a GEICO commercial), by 1967 he would vanish from the US charts entirely for two decades.
The Ultimate Collection rescues a few minor and uncharted hits from Orbison’s MGM period, including “Crawling Back,” “Too Soon to Know,” and “Walk On” that prove he was still capable of the sort of wrenching, epic ballads that brought him fame only a few years earlier.
While Orbison continued to record throughout the ’60s and ’70s, even scoring a minor hit in 1980 with the Emmylou Harris duet “That Lovin’ You Feelin’ Again,” The Ultimate Collection skips directly from 1968 to 1988.
In the meantime, hit covers of Orbison classics by Linda Ronstadt (“Blue Bayou”), Don McLean (“Crying”), and Van Halen (“Oh, Pretty Woman”) kept his music in the popular consciousness, even after the man himself — who’d always maintained a somewhat mysterious image — remained in the shadows.
It was the prominent use of “In Dreams” in David Lynch’s 1987 film Blue Velvet, however, that led to a revival of interest in Orbison’s music. Later that year, Orbison filmed the star-packed concert Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night for Cinemax. The special aired in January 1988 and became a best-selling home video. The Ultimate Collection includes the live version from the concert of “Claudette,” a song Orbison had written about his first wife and which the Everly Brothers made a hit in 1958.
While recording a comeback album in 1988 with Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra, Orbison was enlisted to perform on a song intended to be a George Harrison B-side. The result, “Handle With Care,” also featured Lynne, Bob Dylan, and Tom Petty, and ultimately was released as the first single by the quintet under the alias “the Traveling Wilburys.”
The Ultimate Collection features both “Handle With Care” (with Orbison’s characteristic “I’m so tired of being lonely” bridge) and the solo showcase “Not Alone Anymore.”
Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 unexpectedly became a major hit, climbing to #3 on the album charts and earning the group a Grammy. The stage seemed perfectly set for Orbison’s solo comeback album, Mystery Girl, to build on the Wilburys’ success.
Sadly, however, Orbison died of a heart attack on December 6, 1988, at only 52 years old. Nevertheless, Mystery Girl, released the following February, became a platinum-selling smash.
In addition to lead single “You Got It,” one of Orbison’s biggest hits and most beloved songs, The Ultimate Collection includes two other tracks from Mystery Girl: “California Blue” (like “You Got It,” written by Orbison with fellow Wilburys Lynne and Petty) and “She’s a Mystery to Me” (penned by Bono and The Edge of U2). All three are worthy inclusions to Orbison’s legacy — neither blatantly “retro” nor awkwardly modern, just timeless in the way that the singer always seemed to be.
The Ultimate Collection is rounded out by two more posthumously released tracks, included on 1992’s King of Hearts: “Heartbreak Radio” and “I Drove All Night,” the latter of which was recorded before Cyndi Lauper’s 1989 hit version but released afterward.
Orbison’s sons Alex, Roy Jr., and Wesley selected the 26 tracks that make up The Ultimate Collection, the first compilation to include both solo and Traveling Wilburys recordings. While there are few surprises — and 20 years’ worth of material is elided entirely, as well as Orbison’s Grammy-winning duets with Emmylou Harris and k.d. lang — The Ultimate Collection is a solid aggregation of pretty much every song a casual fan could ask for, as well as a few bonuses from the lesser-explored MGM era and posthumously released albums.
As Orbison famously sang: anything you want, you got it.
Roy Orbison’s The Ultimate Collection is out now from Sony Legacy. Get your copy on Amazon.
