Roy Orbison and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

[WalterHaleJnr]

Crying and Sweet Dream Baby. The latter is either 1985 or 1987 recording double tracked vocal.

[WalterHaleJnr]

[WalterHaleJnr]

This is the title track. Very nicely done and very deserving of the new album title IMHO -
[mp3]A - Love.mp3[/mp3]

[WalterHaleJnr]

"A Posthumous Puppet" ? - now this is rather harsh assessment of the album, i thought. Admittedly there were a few tracks i thought were disappointing and had hoped his sons and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra would've adopted more of a 50-50 balanced approach on classics and lesser known records but for the most part, the RPO and Roy gelled nicely i feel.



The current music market has seen a flash flood of reissues and archival releases in recent years, aimed, without blushing, at baby boomers who came of age as rock ‘n’ roll was gulping its first breaths. It’s a marketing tactic as old as the modern recording industry, but one that has produced some crucial documents, like the recent expanded reissue of Little Richard’s first album or A Boy From Tupelo, a lovingly crafted boxed set compiling all of Elvis Presley’s work from the very early part of his career.

On the flipside are those unnecessary curiosities that seem garish and foolhardy in comparison. It’s there that we find A Love So Beautiful, a newly released compilation that takes some of the best known songs of pop star Roy Orbison and augments them all with orchestral arrangements, new backing tracks and sonic accoutrement.

This was, according to the liner note written by Roy’s son Wesley, “destined to happen,” inspired as they were by If I Can Dream, a similar fluffed up effort that joined Elvis’s vocal tracks with syrupy music played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. And just like that gaudy album, A Love So Beautiful reduces one of the great singer/songwriters of the early rock era into a posthumous puppet, with all energies directed toward one last cash grab before the audience for these kinds of releases dies out.
No song featured here comes away unscathed. Orbison’s early ‘60s sides were perfection, open air showcases for his knee-buckling vocals recorded with restraint and poise by Fred Foster. All of that is stripped away in place of busy arrangements full of string swells and mannered backing vocals. The material that Orbison recorded 25 years later, found on posthumous albums like Mystery Girl and King of Hearts, already suffered from the satiny production style of the time. The work done by producers Nick Patrick and Don Reedman strains them even further, stuffing digital effects and iTunes-style mastering onto already full ideas.

What is worse is the unctuous pride that everyone involved exhibits toward this project. The liner notes are fat with hyperbole. According to Reedman, “we all wanted to make a record from the heart, and that’s just what we have done.” Wesley Orbison refers to “destiny…knocking at the door.” It’s hard to square such thinking with these results. True, there’s a certain charm to the idea of throwing a little guitar figure strummed by the 10 month old grandchild of Roy Orbison to kick off the redux of “Oh, Pretty Woman.” But it feels like a quaint gift for a long retired rocker while they were alive, not something meant for public consumption.

A Love So Beautiful also represents a litmus test for the commercial viability of releases like this. If I Can Dream edged the door open, selling over a million copies in the U.K. If this album does similar business or better, the floodgates will truly be open and you can expect to see many more like it in the near future. Brace yourselves.

By Robert Ham | November 7, 2017
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/ ... eview.html

[WalterHaleJnr]

amid some harsh reviews by the critics, it's great to read that the album has been selling very well in the UK - traditionally Orbison's strongest market.
It's currently #4 but was #2 last week on the albums chart over there. I think this will ensure a follow up album, maybe with lesser known tracks at some point. I will be trying to drop a line to Alex (yet again) about this.
https://www.billboard.com/charts/official-uk-albums

[John]

Only 'Love Hurts' & 'I Drove All Night' will play for me.

Sound good, but as Roy often used that string-soaked backing anyway, the tracks aren't so striking as the Elvis ones...

I told Alex a couple years back to do a RPO album with his dad, I am so happy to see/hear this happen. I might add i mentioned about touching the lesser known tracks, not the classic stuff.

Walter, are you credited anywhere for giving them the idea?

[Colin B]

I can see "Jerry Lee Lewis & the Rockin' RPO !" coming soon...

[John]

I can see "Jerry Lee Lewis & the Rockin' RPO !" coming soon...

He'll need to be dead first.

Before you know it they'll be doing stuff with Dean Martin and Perry Como.

[WalterHaleJnr]

Only 'Love Hurts' & 'I Drove All Night' will play for me.

Sound good, but as Roy often used that string-soaked backing anyway, the tracks aren't so striking as the Elvis ones...

I told Alex a couple years back to do a RPO album with his dad, I am so happy to see/hear this happen. I might add i mentioned about touching the lesser known tracks, not the classic stuff.

Walter, are you credited anywhere for giving them the idea?

I wouldn't go that far, John.

[John]

Only 'Love Hurts' & 'I Drove All Night' will play for me.

Sound good, but as Roy often used that string-soaked backing anyway, the tracks aren't so striking as the Elvis ones...

I told Alex a couple years back to do a RPO album with his dad, I am so happy to see/hear this happen. I might add i mentioned about touching the lesser known tracks, not the classic stuff.

Walter, are you credited anywhere for giving them the idea?

I wouldn't go that far, John.

Well, if you gave Alex the idea, surely you should be credited.

[WalterHaleJnr]

That's something we'll never find out, I'm afraid. I do recall sending him one post regarding Barry's complaint that his MGM years box was missing the CD "Roy Orbison Sings" album and he responded then. My next post to him following that was where i talked about the Elvis RPO new album and how it would be cool to see/hear the same thing done for Roy provided that they touched the rarer lesser know records and Roy's later 1987 re-recordings of his famous songs. Not sure if Alex YouTube address is still active now. It's definetly worth dropping him a line again.

[Suspicious Minds]

Thanks, Walter, for posting the Roy Orbison RPO songs here. I'm divided; sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn't.

Music critics aren't enthused, it seems. Here's the review from AllMusic:

Roy Orbison's old Sun labelmate Elvis Presley wound up scoring an international hit in 2015 with If I Can Dream, an album where the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played over old Elvis recordings. With an audience established, other artist estates stepped into the breech, including Orbison's, who endorsed pairing old Roy recordings with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Given that Orbison's hits often verged on the symphonic, this pairing might seem to make more sense than Presley, but A Love So Beautiful contains a considerable amount of rockers -- "Oh, Pretty Woman," "Dream Baby," "Uptown," "Mean Woman Blues" -- that do not lend themselves well to ornate arrangements; they sound pretty silly with the strings sawing. Odder still, Orbison's lush classics -- "In Dreams," "Crying," "It's Over," "Running Scared" -- do not benefit from the orchestral reinterpretations; they sound sticky and heavy. What was once elegant has curdled into something syrupy, and while the technological achievement is admirable -- the seams can't be heard between the old and new recordings -- the resulting record does a disservice to the imagination of the original Orbison recordings and his gorgeous voice.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/a-love-s ... 0003058645

What do you think about it? Fair, unfair, too harsh?

[TonyS]

Regarding the Orbison RPO.
All Music review is spot on IMO.
I'm dissapointed with the results, I suspect mainly because most of his Monument tracks included strings and arrangements already. With the Elvis RPO releases there were a couple of curiosities because they took vocals from different takes and cut and spliced a bit, and of course 'I Got A Thing About You Baby' was very clever.
No such commitment to anything like that in Roy's album.
The best tracks are indeed those that the family play on, but still nothing spectacular.

[WalterHaleJnr]

Regarding the Orbison RPO.
All Music review is spot on IMO.
I'm dissapointed with the results, I suspect mainly because most of his Monument tracks included strings and arrangements already. With the Elvis RPO releases there were a couple of curiosities because they took vocals from different takes and cut and spliced a bit, and of course 'I Got A Thing About You Baby' was very clever.
No such commitment to anything like that in Roy's album.
The best tracks are indeed those that the family play on, but still nothing spectacular.

I see your point. It would have been nicer if they left alone his famous 60's records and touched / worked on the later re-recordings Roy cut in the mid-80's - a mix of the later reworkings and rarer MGM tracks would have been better.