Orbison's greatest album paired with his premier MGM record

Well whaddaya know... here I was complaining about the lack of CD-releases of Orbison's MGM albums (1965-1973) and here they are! All of them! Tremendous!



There Is Only One Roy Orbison, his fisrt recording for MGM, truthfully isn't a masterpiece, but it WAS his first sincere LP, not a collection of single A and B-sides. "Ride Away" is fantastic and was a hit, the other great cuts are the haunting "Affraid To Sleep" and a astonishing version of "Big As I Can Dream". The rest is never bad, but not gripping.. the sped up rendition of "Claudette" is pretty standard, "Summerlove" and "Two Of A Kind" are mediocre cocktail-piano ditties. The only uptempo song here is "Sugar & Honey", and it's pretty amusing.



Now to the real mccoy. "Orbison Way" without a doubt is his greatest album ever. It's a coherent unit, with sharply executed 'rococo' ballads and baroq 'rock'. Everyone knows "Crawling Back" and "Breaking Up...", but the real gems are the dark "Maybe", the beautifully haunted "Wasn't Very Long Ago" and the intricated "Go Away". Orbison's best album.



After buying this two-fer, go ahead and buy the rest! ALL of them! "Classic Roy Orbison" and "Many Moods" are superb, and his seventies albums "Sings" and "Memphis" still work too!

This is Essential Roy

Because the music times had changed by 1965, many of these songs that would have been hits a few years earlier never made it to the singles 45 market. But there are alot of great songs here and more importantly, these MGM albums hold together very well as albums.