Roy Orbison & Various Artists - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 2-15-1974

Here's a special theme edition of the "Midnight Special" TV show. The show's emcee Wolfman Jack called it the show's third "solid gold" show. What "solid gold" meant was what people were already starting to call "oldies," meaning musical acts that had hits in the 1950s and early 1960s, but generally stopped having them by the 1970s. Roy Orbison was the show's host. But in this case, that was a nominal position. He got to perform four songs, while the other guest stars got three or two.

The other performers on this show: Drifters, Del Shannon, Jackie Wilson, Bobby Vee, Lloyd Price, Duane Eddy, and Tommy Roe. That's a pretty impressive list, if you were looking for stars from that earlier era. 

Listening to this sounds a lot like listening to an oldies radio station playing one classic hit after another, except everything here was performed live. And while their hit-making days were generally over, they were all still relatively young and still in full capacity of their musical powers. 

This show started and edited a little different than most shows. Typically, the show started with about a minute of the song "Midnight Special," performed by Johnny Rivers. (I usually try to edit that out.) But this one began with just a few seconds of comments by Wolfman Jack, then bang, right into the first song. It also ended differently, with some final comments first by Wolfman Jack, and then Roy Orbison. As Orbison talked, the "Midnight Special" finally started to play, and then faded out. I got rid of that, and replaced it with audience applause. So that's why that track has "[Edit]" in its title. 

As usual with this show, the music is unreleased and the sound quality is excellent. Also as usual, I did a lot of editing to smooth over the gaps between songs by adding in extra audience applause. 

This album is an hour and five minutes long. I guess the usual format mentioned above allowed this episode to have slightly more music in it than usual. The show was an hour and a half long, but that included commercials, so this length is about as long as these albums from the show can get. 

01 talk [Edit] (Wolfman Jack)
02 Oh, Pretty Woman (Roy Orbison)
03 talk (Roy Orbison)
04 Up on the Roof (Drifters)
05 talk (Roy Orbison)
06 Runaway (Del Shannon)
07 talk (Roy Orbison & Del Shannon)
08 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Jackie Wilson)
09 talk (Roy Orbison)
10 Take Good Care of My Baby (Bobby Vee)
11 talk (Wolfman Jack)
12 Personality (Lloyd Price)
13 talk (Roy Orbison)
14 Rebel-'Rouser [Instrumental] (Duane Eddy)
15 talk (Jackie Wilson)
16 Dream Baby [How Long Must I Dream] (Roy Orbison)
17 Save the Last Dance for Me (Drifters)
18 Hats Off to Larry (Del Shannon)
19 talk (Roy Orbison)
20 Sheila (Tommy Roe)
21 The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (Bobby Vee)
22 Lonely Teardrops (Jackie Wilson)
23 Stagger Lee (Lloyd Price)
24 Running Scared (Roy Orbison)
25 talk (Roy Orbison & Wolfman Jack)
26 Everybody (Tommy Roe)
27 Ramrod [Instrumental] (Duane Eddy)
28 That's Why [I Love You So] (Jackie Wilson)
29 Keep Searching (Del Shannon)
30 Only the Lonely (Roy Orbison)
31 Jam Up Jelly Tight (Tommy Roe)
32 Devil or Angel (Bobby Vee)
33 talk (Wolfman Jack)
34 talk [Edit] (Roy Orbison)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cSheycvb

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/pFyuyT0alyzHswm/file 

The cover image shows Wolfman Jack interviewing Roy Orbison (in the sunglasses). It's a screenshot I took from this exact concert.

Various Artists - Roy Orbison Tribute Concert to Benefit the Homeless, Universal Amphitheater, Los Angeles, CA, 2-24-1990

I recently stumbled across this Roy Orbison concert. As far as I can tell, it's never really appeared as a bootleg, other than as a single file with no song titles or artists given. So I had to some research just to figure out what this was exactly. But I think it was worth it because it's a very interesting show, with lots of big names. Despite it being ostensibly about Roy Orbison, probably the biggest musical event of the concert was the reunion of three key members of the Byrds - Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, and Chris Hillman - who were then joined by Bob Dylan for the song "Mr. Tambourine Man." Dylan wrote it in 1964, and the Byrds had a Number One hit with it in 1965, but they'd never done the song on stage together.

Roy Orbison died of a heart attack at the end of 1988, when he was only 52 years old. The timing of his death was especially unfortunate because he hadn't had much commercial success in the 1970s and 1980s, but that drastically changed right as he died, with him being a member of the Traveling Wilburys supergroup. He even had his first Top Ten hit in over 25 years with "You Got It." 

Regardless, Orbison was a much admired musical legend. So when he died, his wife Barbara Orbison put together a tribute concert that also doubled as a benefit concert to help the homeless. It's an odd concert as these things go, because most of the acts paid tribute to Orbison by covering his songs, but some other acts went in a different direction and played songs that seemed to have no link to Orbison whatsoever. For instance Iggy Pop played "Home," a song from his then-current album. Speaking of Iggy Pop, another odd aspect to the concert was the musical acts involved. Some made lots of sense, because they'd been heavily influenced by Orbison, such as John Fogerty or Chris Isaak. 

Others were more mystifying musically. For instance, you may well wonder what Patrick Swayze is doing here, dueting on the Everly Brothers song "Love Hurts" with Larry Gatlin. Yes, that Patrick Swayze, the famous actor. He released a few songs here and there, but never put out an album. Apparently, some acts mainly got involved because they liked the charitable cause.

Aside from Iggy Pop, the Patrick Swayze and Larry Gatlin duet, and the Byrds songs, plus a duet version of "I'm in the Mood" by John Lee Hooker & Bonnie Raitt, and "The Thrill Is Gone" by B. B. King, I believe all the rest of the songs have some Orbison connection. For instance, "In the Real World," "Rock House," "Chicken Hearted," and "That Lovin' You Feelin' Again" are fairly obscure songs, but they were all written and/or sung by Orbison. (He also did "Love Hurts," although the Everly Brothers did it first.)

Anyway, this contains all of the music performed at the concert that I could find. However, I cut out some of the talking between songs. There were some pitches for people to donate to the charitable cause, which is no longer relevant since the phone number mentioned has long gone dead, I'd assume. But I suspect there was more banter between songs, and maybe even more songs, that didn't get bootlegged. The show was broadcast on TV, but I think it's a safe bet a lot of edits were made to get it to fit within the allowed screen time. There were some acts involved that didn't get any songs featured at all, such as Michelle Shocked and the duet of Wendy and Lisa. They did help out along with some others on the all-female version of "Oh, Pretty Woman," but I wouldn't be surprised if they did songs that got cut from the TV show, and thus this bootleg, because they weren't so famous.

Also, near the end of this concert, the Byrds did four songs: "Turn, Turn, Turn," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Eight Miles High," and "He Was a Friend of Mine." Dylan took part with "Mr. Tambourine Man," as I previously mentioned. " He also took part in "He Was a Friend of Mine," but just barely, because he merely strummed along on guitar and didn't sing at all, so I didn't add his name to the credits for that song. I know this because I found a video of it on YouTube.

The Byrds performances of "Turn, Turn, Turn" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" have been officially released on a Byrds box set. But the other two remain unreleased, as far as I know.

This album is an hour and 39 minutes long. If anyone knows the correct order of the songs, please let me know.

UPDATE: On February 12, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. Musical associate Lilpanda had a different source for this concert, with the same high quality sound. Most of it was the same, but there were five songs I didn't have. So I added those. I don't know the correct song order, so I put three of the newly discovered ones at the start (the ones by NRBO, Joe Ely, and Syd Straw). That also included two songs by the Byrds, "Eight Miles High" and "He Was a Friend of Mine," so I put those with the rest of the Byrds' set. That added about 20 minutes of music to the album.

01 Chicken Hearted (NRBQ)
02 Working for the Man (Joe Ely)
03 She's a Mystery to Me (Syd Straw)
04 talk (John Fogerty)
05 Ooby Dooby (John Fogerty)
06 Mean Woman Blues (Levon Helm)
07 I'm in the Mood (John Lee Hooker & Bonnie Raitt)
08 talk (Chris Isaak)
09 Leah (Chris Isaak)
10 Dream Baby [How Long Must I Dream] (Shrunken Heads [Tom Tom Club & Jerry Harrison])
11 Crying (k. d. lang)
12 The Thrill Is Gone (B. B. King with Al Kooper & Don Was)
13 You Got It (John Hiatt with Don Was)
14 It's Over (Was [Not Was])
15 In the Real World (Booker T. Jones)
16 Home (Iggy Pop)
17 Oh, Pretty Woman (k.d. lang, Bonnie Raitt & Emmylou Harris)
18 That Lovin' You Feelin' Again (Emmylou Harris & Michael McDonald)
19 Claudette (Dwight Yoakam)
20 talk (Bernie Taupin)
21 Running Scared (Benny Mardones)
22 Love Hurts (Larry Gatlin & Patrick Swayze)
23 talk (Stray Cats)
24 Rock House (Stray Cats)
25 talk (Barbara Orbison)
26 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
27 Candy Man (Bonnie Raitt with Chris Isaak)
28 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Byrds)
29 Eight Miles High (Byrds)
30 talk (Roger McGuinn)
31 Mr. Tambourine Man (Byrds & Bob Dylan)
32 He Was a Friend of Mine (Byrds)
33 Only the Lonely (Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3by8k2RW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FNC3nsZwXP8dae0/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/m7zft

For the cover, I used a photo of Dylan with the three former Byrds from this exact concert. The section at the top with the title comes from some promotional artwork for this concert, but I cropped and stretched it to fit.

Roy Orbison - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Roy Sings Orbison, London, Britain, 7-11-1975

A couple of weeks ago, I published the first volume of Roy Orbison at the BBC. Here's the second and final volume.

Generally speaking, I like to post music of artists here when they were in their peak years. For Orbison, in my opinion, that was the 1960s. Then he spent a long time in the musical wilderness, without much critical or commercial success, before hitting another peak in the late 1980s with a new successful hit single and album, as well as membership in the Traveling Wilburys. Unfortunately, he died of a heart attack in 1988 at the age of 52, cutting his career revival short.

This album takes place during that musical wilderness time, when he seemed to be very out of fashion with the musical trends of the time. But I'm posting this because he was stubbornly consistent, in a good way, meaning this concert from 1975 probably would have sounded nearly exactly the same as if it had been recorded in, say, 1967, except for a few song selections. He kept doggedly pursuing his musical vision, and eventually the rest of the world caught up with him again. 

I also like it because it's a single show done for a BBC TV special in front of a live audience, so it has a good musical unity, as well as occasional comments by Orbison between the songs. The one downside to that is that it's relatively short, at only 33 minutes long.

There has been one official, though obscure, BBC album for him, called "Live at the BBC." I'm not a fan of it because it only grabs some BBC recordings here and there. In this case, that album included seven of the eleven performances from this show, and none of the banter between songs. So I ignored that album as a source, and used a complete version I found on YouTube instead. In terms of sound quality, I can't really tell the difference. I think this sounds perfectly fine.

Generally speaking, this is a run through of his best known songs. But it also includes "Hung Up on You," which was his latest single release at the time.

01 Only the Lonely (Roy Orbison)
02 talk (Roy Orbison)
03 Crying (Roy Orbison)
04 Penny Arcade (Roy Orbison)
05 talk (Roy Orbison)
06 Blue Bayou (Roy Orbison)
07 Running Scared (Roy Orbison)
08 talk (Roy Orbison)
09 Hung Up on You (Roy Orbison)
10 talk (Roy Orbison)
11 Candy Man (Roy Orbison)
12 In Dreams (Roy Orbison)
13 talk (Roy Orbison)
14 Mean Woman Blues (Roy Orbison)
15 It's Over (Roy Orbison)
16 talk (Roy Orbison)
17 Oh, Pretty Woman (Roy Orbison)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15910223/RoyOrb_1975_BBSessionsVolume2RoySngsOrbison__7-11-1975_atse.zip.html

The cover image is a screenshot taken from the exact show featured here.

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.