Roy Orbison was a big star in the early 1960s, but faded by the middle of that decade, eclipsed by The Beatles and the British Invasion. Orbison occupied an interesting intersection where country, rock and roll and pop converged, and although this was no longer a major thoroughfare in pop culture, his audience never disappeared.
The evidence for his persistence comes in a box set covering his work from 1965 through 1973, The MGM Years, and a previously unreleased 1969 LP, One of the Lonely Ones. Thpse MGM years were evidently busy ones for Orbison. The set includes no less than 13 albums released during that eight-year period. The rapidly changing world of popular music found its way into Orbison’s oeuvre only in feint echoes. Mostly, he carried on along the same road as before. His creamy voice continued to reach for operatic moments and make vulnerability accessible to his male listeners as he sang of thwarted love and dreams that could never come true.
There were low points. His soundtrack to The Fastest Gun in the West (1967) included a clunky reach-out to Native Americans (“I’ll keep firewater flowing”) and his producers sometimes traded in cheese, wrapping him in clichéd choruses of brass and female vocals. Orbison also displayed an Elvis-like willingness to sing his way through everyone’s songbook. He performed an excellent version of “Money” but succumbed to the sentiment of “Danny Boy.”
It was characteristic of the misdirection of Orbison’s career during those years that one of his best albums of that period, One of the Lonely Ones, with its shades of Burt Bacharach and recollections of his early ‘60s work, remained unreleased until now. Orbison had to wait until the 1980s before becoming hip again.
