Roy Orbison was one of the few truly great artists to make
an impact between Rock & Roll’s first wave and the British Invasion. That
doesn’t mean he didn’t make worthwhile records before and after that brief
window of roughly five years. In the fifties he wrote hyper swingers like “Ooby
Dooby” and “Claudette”, a hit for The Everly Brothers, while with Sun Records
before maturing into the more dramatic, near-operatic style that made him pop’s
King of Tears. After having the final big hit of his key phase, “Pretty Woman”,
which married the hard rhythms of his earliest records with the more melodic
and complex riffing of the burgeoning Mersey sound, Orbison never stopped
making records, and enjoyed a major resurgence in the late eighties when he
joined Jeff Lynne’s stable as a Traveling Wilbury and solo artist.
Sony Legacy’s new collection, The Ultimate Roy Orbison, boasts of being the first compilation to
incorporate tracks from all of the artist’s phases, though this isn’t true
since Legacy’s four-disc Soul of Rock and
Roll box set from 2008 had already done that. The big difference here,
besides the fact that Ultimate
distills Orbison’s career down to a single disc of 26-tracks, is that it
jumbles the chronology. I generally prefer this approach to boring old chronological
order, though the eras represented on this set are so vastly separated that it
makes for a bit of a jarring listen when, say, the rockabilly “Ooby Dooby” gets
sandwiched between the peak-era gut punch “It’s Over” and the Lynne-era
“Heartbreak Radio”. With all due irony, it points out how the slick eighties
stuff now sounds a bit dated while the fifties and sixties tracks remain as
fresh and timeless as ever.
Still, unlike a lot of classic artists who attempted
comebacks in the eighties, Roy Orbison never embarrassed himself. “You Got It”
may not be as indescribably essential as “Dream Baby” or “Crying”, it’s still a
damn good song, and this collection does do a fine job of highlighting the man’s
consistent quality control. Plus, even though The Ultimate Collection covers an expansive period, the only
missing track that really hurts is the luxurious non-hit “Shahdaroba”. Of course, Roy Orbison would
not deserve to be called The King of Tears if he didn’t make us feel a little
pain.
