Description

This is a fine 12 track album by the late great Roy Orbison (33.45mins long) recorded in early 1969 but never released, instead MGM released ’Many Moods’ then ’Hank Williams – the Orbison way’ that year.

Now being heard for the first time for nearly 50 years as it was recently discovered in the vaults. There are 5 Orbison/Dees written collaborations, with 1 solo written Bill Dees song ’Little girl (in the big city)’, a couple of Mickey Newbury songs, 1 by Don Gibson, a cover of Rodgers/Hammerstein’s ’You’ll never walk alone’ and a couple of other songs by Sammy King.

Most are ballads as expected, there’s the rocker ’Child woman, woman child’ and the mid-tempo ’Give up’ that break that mould. The true stand outs for me are the title track ’One of the lonely ones’ with its heart breaking lyrics, ’Sweet memories’, ’After tonight’ and the Don Gibson written track ’I will always’.

There’s a decent 12 page booklet that does it’s job and no more, there’s a couple of nice pictures of Roy and some memorabilia.

The sound quality is excellent. Overall, a great listen, whilst not as fantastic as his first 3 albums that MGM released (1965/66) or Roy’s 1967 album ’Cry softly, lonely one’ it’s fantastic to hear finally after nearly half a century, there are some great lost gems on here from a much missed legend. If I take my rose coloured glasses off it’s still a solid 8.5/10, 4.5 stars. Roll on the 13 disc box set.