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The Essential Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison

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iTunes Review

“I . . . knew that if anyone got a look at him he’d be dead inside of a week,” Sun Records founder Sam Phillips once said of Roy Orbison. More than 40 years after his first single though, the Texas native’s voice, songs and look are all rock and roll classics. The Essential Roy Orbison showcases 40 tracks from most stages of his career: leaping Sun rockabilly (“Ooby Dooby,” with a guitar solo so nice the Big O played it twice), country hits (the Emmylou Harris duet “That Lovin’ You Feeling Again”), and most importantly the towering pop psychodramas that made his legend. “Only the Lonely,” the deeply weird “Leah” and the rest are augmented by boppers such as “Working for the Man” (“I wanna kill him but it wouldn’t be right”) and latter-day classics by Elvis Costello (“The Comedians”) and the team of Orbison and Glenn Danzig (“Life Fades Away,” a nugget from the Less Than Zero soundtrack). Even with “Running Scared” and “Crying” represented by T Bone Burnett-produced remakes, Essential is a pretty flawless summation of a great artist’s work.

Customer Reviews

Price Check
     

First, I'd like to say that this album is very comprehensive and has most of the "essential" Roy Orbison songs, and is also only five tracks shy of having the whole MYSTERY GIRL album as well. As an earlier reviewer mentioned, I would suggest you buy this album first and pick and choose from other albums. Specifically, I would go ahead and pick the missing tracks from MYSTERY GIRL and then pick and choose from others. For instance, the collection KING OF HEARTS has a few good songs that are not included here. Second, this album also has versions of songs that are included on other albums as "album only," and therefore gets around that annoyance (for instance, on MYSTERY GIRL "The Only One" is "album only," but you get it on this album--it isn't live, but personally I could live without the live version). Lastly, I would also like to note that this title is available in a physical format from a prominent online vendor (with free shipping no less) for almost $6 less than it is priced here. True, you have to wait, but I personally don't like to pay more than some change for convenience. I also believe that digital copies should ALWAYS be cheaper than their originals since digital copies are not priced for materials or distribution costs. In essence this is a great starter album, and you should get MYSTERY GIRL's extra tracks to complete MYSTERY GIRL, but you should try to find this album somewhere else.

Great Music
     

The clone wars of modern music where there is rarely any new songs just copies of others is getting old. And yet here is a wonderful artist inspired by life experiences and his love of music, he lost many of his loved ones tragically, and yet he still managed to continue his legendary music. I love this album and would recommend it to anyone that appreciates good music.

Buy this album b4 buying any other Ray Orbison stuff on iTunes
     

This is a great collection - the only problem is, is that if you have any other Ray Orbison albums, odds are you have at least afew of these songs and you can't pick and choose - some songs are available only if you buy the album. I would have felt totally burned and not bought this colelction except the songs I wanted are so darn good!

Biography

Born: April 23, 1936 in Vernon, TX

Genre: Rock

Years Active: '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s

Although he shared the same rockabilly roots as Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison went on to pioneer an entirely different brand of country/pop-based rock & roll in the early '60s. What he lacked in charisma and photogenic looks, Orbison made up for in spades with his quavering operatic voice and melodramatic narratives of unrequited love and yearning. In the process, he established rock & roll archetypes of the underdog and the hopelessly romantic loser. These were...
Full Bio

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