Roy Orbison - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1965-1971

Next, it's Roy Orbison's turn to have some BBC sessions. This is the first of two volumes. The second one will be a short, single concert from the 1970s.

It may be a bit of a surprise that he has enough BBC sessions for that, since Roy Orbison was an American singer. But I don't think it's a coincidence that this volume dates from 1965 to 1971. Orbison had lots of hits in the early 1960s all over the world, peaking with "Oh, Pretty Woman" in 1964, which I've heard is one of the top ten most played songs on the radio of all time. But then his fortunes dropped considerably from 1965 in the US, where the British Invasion reigned supreme. From 1965 to 1969, he only had five Top 40 hits there, most towards the bottom of those charts. By contrast, in Britain he had 13 Top 40 hits in those same years, including a number three hit in 1966 with "Too Soon to Know." So it's not surprising that he capitalized on this by playing more in Britain.

There is one official BBC album for him, called "Live at the BBC." But it's rather scanty, dealing with the years from 1968 to 1988. Six of the songs here are from that, and the rest are unreleased. All of those six are from proper BBC studio sessions.

As for those unreleased songs, they come from a variety of sources, not all of them strictly the BBC. Songs five through eight are from a 1966 BBC session that the official album totally overlooked, even though the sound is perfectly good. The first four songs are also technically from the BBC, but a live appearance on a BBC TV show (that was actually filmed in the Netherlands) rather than a studio session. The remaining songs are from appearances on British or Australian TV shows. 

I've avoided including more than one performance of each song. There were only a couple of repeated songs from all these different sources with the exception of "It's Over," which he played on three more occasions. (The other repeats were "Oh, Pretty Woman" and "Twinkle Toes.")

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Running Scared (Roy Orbison)
02 Goodnight (Roy Orbison)
03 Mean Woman Blues (Roy Orbison)
04 What'd I Say (Roy Orbison)
05 It Wasn't Very Long Ago [Edit] (Roy Orbison)
06 Twinkle Toes (Roy Orbison)
07 Breaking Up Is Breaking My Heart (Roy Orbison)
08 It's Over (Roy Orbison)
09 In Dreams (Roy Orbison)
10 Too Soon to Know (Roy Orbison)
11 Communication Breakdown (Roy Orbison)
12 Leah (Roy Orbison)
13 Oh, Pretty Woman (Roy Orbison)
14 Only the Lonely (Roy Orbison)
15 Crying (Roy Orbison)
16 Walk On (Roy Orbison)
17 Where Have All the Flowers Gone (Roy Orbison)
18 Scarlet Ribbons [For Her Hair] (Roy Orbison)
19 This Little Bird (Roy Orbison)
20 Dream Baby [How Long Must I Dream] (Roy Orbison)
21 Sweet Caroline (Roy Orbison)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15910328/RoyOrb_1965-1971_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The album cover features Orbison from a performance at the Palladium in London in 1966.