Roy Orbison - The All-Time Greatest Hits of Roy Orbison

It's a measure of Roy Orbison's classics that even some of the uptempo songs that break up the dominant balladic mood of this 20-song collection are themselves fairly melancholic. Rarely does Orbison allow himself the outright celebration of something like "Mean Woman Blues," more often going for the shades of gray that slip into "Blue Angel" and "Leah." Few could do what he achieves on these singles, and not just because few are gifted with such a voice. The biggest achievement of all may be Orbison's ability to make a devastated cry like "Only the Lonely" sound somehow peaceful. --Rickey Wright Amazon.com essential recording

A Cut Above The Rest

It tells you something about the artist in question when, in well over 40 reviews, just two award this volume less than the 5-star maximum. Obviously, when it comes to Roy Orbison it takes a real nit-picker to find fault.

He chalked up 32 Billboard Top/Hot 100 singles from 1956 to 1992 (two of them posthumous and 3 of them double-sided hits), 10 Adult Contemporary crossovers, and over a half dozen on each of the R&B and Country charts. Not to mention the millions in EP/LP sales.

If I was to engage in nit-picking I would point out that tracks 13 and 14 were not, themselves, hits in the true sense of the word, Love Hurts being the B-side of Running Scared, and Shahadaroba the flip of In Dreams. This being his best while at Monument, perhaps these could have been replaced by the 1965 hits Goodnight [# 21] and (Say) You're My Girl [# 39]. Also, the liner notes by Boudleaux Bryant are rather skimpy for such an important artist.

Even so, those shortcomings are not enough for even this noted nit-picker to assign less than 5 stars.
August 23, 2007

Great sounds from the Best

This CD brought back lots of good memories. Roy Orbison was one of the Greats, Saw him in person years ago and will never forget the great voice he had. I recommend buying this CD July 25, 2007

Best 1 disc Orbison collection

This is the best single disc collection of Roy Orbison's Monument hits. It was originally released on 2 LPs in the early 80's. One thing I've always wondered about is that this 20 track CD has always been also available as 2 separate volumes with 10 tracks each & having the same cover artwork (you'd have to be careful to read the list of tracks on the back) Why?? If someone is an Orbison fan why would they want one volume & not the other? Why not just have all 20 tracks on one CD, as it is done here? Also, one reviewer asks why "You Got It" isn't here,well it's because that song wasn't even recorded yet when this album was released, and that song was on Virgin Records,not Monument. May 27, 2007

It is Roy Orbison

What more can be said? Roy Orbison has a quality of voice that can't be duplicated. One of the few really original and great voices. March 29, 2007

Sound is good

I would like to suggest, contrary to the review of Aug 2006, that the sound on this nice collection of Roy Orbison's Monument hits, is actually quite good.

With the puzzling exception of the song LOVE HURTS, which seems to have been mastered from a very muffled tape.

This Sony disk was issued in 1989, and has not been re-mastered since then, so you're getting a relatively unfutzed edition for a nominal price. March 21, 2007

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