Roy Orbison: Lonely and Blue Re-Issue from Classic Records

First published in The Absolute Sound. Copyright © 2002 by Absolute Multimedia. Reprinted with permission.

Roy Orbison: Lonely and Blue
Classic Records SM 14002 (stereo), M 4002 (mono) (re-issues of original Monument LPs with the same catalog numbers)

Roy Orbison was in the opinion of many, including myself, the greatest popular music singer who ever lived. His powerfully dramatic, expressively emotional, unique voice, perfectly suited for his songs of romance found and lost, will never be equaled.

Lonely and Blue, released in 1961 in both mono and stereo, was Orbison's first. Featuring his first hit, the soaring "Only the Lonely," the album stands more than 40 years later as an acknowledged masterwork of the recording art. Engineered by the legendary Bill Porter, who also recorded Elvis, Chet Atkins and other greats, at RCA Victor Studios in Nashville, the sound quality is astonishingly realistic, rich and detailed, with a wide dynamic range unusual for then—or now.

The album was recorded to two-track stereo tape with no overdubs (!); the two tracks folded into mono for the mono release, which Porter says is the preferred one. The pop-country-rock songs (some timeless, some a little corny), combine guitars-bass-drums-piano instrumentation with mixed chorus, strings and other instruments for a lush, expansive sound.

Original pressings of Lonely and Blue are exceedingly rare and I'm told a stereo fetches $800+ in VG condition. Luckily, I had originals of both on hand for comparison to the re-issues. After adjusting VTA to compensate for the greater thickness of their 200-gram Quiex SV-P vinyl, the re-issues were remarkably close to my originals in every sonic respect, with slightly better upper midrange and high-frequency resolution. (Figure the highs on my originals were shaved off by a '60s clunker turntable.) Both the stereo and mono re-issues have slightly more presence than the slightly more distant-sounding originals. All in all, there are the closest matches to the originals of any re-issues I've ever heard—a monumental achievement.