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Sings Lonely and Blue
Sings Lonely and Blue

Sings Lonely and Blue in Bloomington, MN

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Time and familiarity -- through multiple reissues -- may have muted the seeming significance of some of what's here, but in 1960
Sings Lonely and Blue
was not only a breakthrough for
Roy Orbison
as his debut LP, but also for
rock & roll
. Up to that point, apart from
Elvis Presley
-- who was in a class by himself -- few white rock & rollers had even tried to make as bold a use of the LP as what we hear on this record.
Orbison
, his collaborator
Joe Melson
, and producer
Fred Foster
turned the singer's debut long-player into a huge canvas for a sound that combined
's beat, Nashville's
countrypolitan
sound, and the singer's unique multi-octave range and
operatic
intensity into something unique in music. The single
"Only the Lonely"
may have been the most accessible and commercial side of this new sound, but the whole album was packed with great moments and different permutations of that sound: the powerful lead vocal and the
Boots Randolph
sax break on
"I'll Say It's My Fault"
; the haunting
-
Melson
"Come Back to Me (My Love),"
which was like a mini-movie script, a vest-pocket romantic melodrama sung with
depth and played to a light
beat;
Don Gibson
's
"I'd Be a Legend in My Time,"
and
"I Can't Stop Loving You,"
both filled with larger-than-life musical attributes and emotions behind
's extraordinary singing,
treating the former almost like a
Verdi
aria while a sax solo, the
Anita Kerr Singers
, and a dense string section hold it in the realm of pop music; and
"Bye Bye Love"
given the new
treatment and sounding like a
country-pop
symphony. The material was uniformly strong and consistent, probably due, in part, to the fact that
was able to draw from nearly a year's worth of recording activity to assemble the contents of the album, and he also took advantage of the album's stereo release to devise a crisp, discreet, two-channel mix that brought out all of the details of this sound in notably sharp relief, creating one of the earliest stereo
albums that was actually superior to its mono equivalent. Indeed,
was among the first
LPs to attract the interest of serious audiophile enthusiasts. ~ Bruce Eder
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