Roy Orbison

The best-recorded Roy Orbison live disc ever issued, taken from the soundtrack of the HBO concert from the 1980s with VIP guests like Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello. This was a sort of magical video, and the performances are splendid, along with the good feelings involved. On the other hand, the performances are extremely reverential to the established studio versions of the songs (all of the hits are here), and intended to mimic them, so this isn't quite the same as a live album as it would have been done back when. The pity is that neither Monument nor MGM ever taped any complete concerts by Orbison from the 1960s, and all that remains are TV appearances from Europe.

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…

What it says is what you get. This double-disc collection on Monument collects all of the Roy Orbison singles recorded for the label after he left Sun, and before he left for MGM. In other words, this is CLASSIC Roy. There are 52 cuts from his biggest years, including a couple of German-language versions of "Mama" and "San Fernando." For the uninitiated, this set does leave off cuts such as "Rock House" and "Ooby Dooby," but those can be found easily elsewhere – on a comp called The Sun Years, for example. This set boils down the big Monument box set to a pair of discs that contain pure gold, revealing the diversity and depth of Orbison's genius as a writer and a singer. From "In Dreams" and "Blue Bayou" to "Shahdaroba" and "Oh, Pretty Woman," all of the bases are covered.

The ultimate Orbison! Between 1955 and 1965 Roy Orbison revolutionised popular music and these are the recordings that did it! This 7-CD set includes every recording from his golden decade! Beginning his career as a rockabilly singer on Jew-Wel and Sun Records , Roy scored one hit, 'Oooby Dooby', and left many great early rare and rockin' sides behind …'Problem Child, Down The Line, Rockhouse, Cat Called Domino'…