Roy Orbison

The Official Website of The Soul of Rock and Roll

“OH, PRETTY WOMAN” #1 50 Years Ago!

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Mercy!!!!  50 Years!

On this day in 1964 Roy Orbison’s smash hit “OH, PRETTY WOMAN” started its 3 week run

at #1 on the Billboard chart!

Since its release in August of 1964, the record breaking, award winning, and iconic song has

inspired a film of the same title, a perfume line, and countless genre spanning covers from

artists including Al Green, Van Halen, and Bruce Springsteen to name a few.

Here is “OH, PRETTY WOMAN” the Official Video featuring footage from the 1965 Monument Concert.  Roy Orbison’s co-writer on the song, Bill Dees, can be seen on keys-

 

American Songwriter: Lyric of the Week “Running Scared”

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This Friday we are celebrating 50 years since Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” reached #1, but Roy’s first number 1 single was “RUNNING SCARED.”

American Songwriter Magazine is featuring “Running Scared” as their Lyric of the Week:

“In his autobiography Chronicles, Voume 1, Bob Dylan wrote a vivid passage about hearing Roy Orbison sing “Running Scared” on the radio back in the early 60’s. “He was now singing his compositions in three and four octaves that made you want to drive your car off a cliff,” Dylan remembered. “He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he’d start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leaving you muttering something to yourself like, ‘Man, I don’t believe it.’ His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious— no pollywog or fledgling juvenile. There wasn’t anything else on the radio like him…”

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