Only The Lonely
Roy Orbison Vinyl Record Memories

"Only The Lonely" screamed hit from its first few bars. A team of vocalists, The Anita Kerr Singers, gently crooning "dum dum dum, dum-be-doo-wah" and other such syllables to an instantly memorable bittersweet melody, ending by singing the title phrase.

When Fred Foster, Monument Records founder and producer, signed Orbison in 1959 he gave him the support he needed. Roy Orbison wrote a lot of songs with themes of loneliness and yearning, but in many cases there was a lot more to them.

"Only The Lonely" is the song that, more than any other, defined Roy Orbison's career. Other than "Oh, Pretty Woman," it is Orbison's most famous and successful song.

It began as a fragmentary piece that songwriter Joe Melson had been working on before showing it to his new writing partner. After working it up a little further, they had unsuccessfully pitched the song to Elvis and the Everly Brothers, who’d already had a hit in 1958 with a track Orbison had written for them, Claudette.

Refusing to give up by this minor setback, Orbison, after a nudge from the Everly Brothers, decided to record the song himself at his third Monument session, in March 1960. Although Foster, lacking his own facilities, had to use RCA’s Studio B in Nashville to record Orbison, he didn’t cut corners on employing accomplished sidemen or on sound quality.

Crack Nashville session men such as Hank Garland and Harold Bradley on guitars, Bob Moore on Base and Floyd Cramer on piano played on the Only The Lonely session. Another Nashville stalwart, engineer Bill Porter used close-mic'ing techniques to get the best out of the backing vocals Orbison so loved to use - in this instance the Anita Kerr Singers, along with Joe Melson, co-author on Only The Lonely and several other Roy Orbison songs.

It would be an unpardonable oversight to overlook the contribution of Joe Melson to Roy's meteoric rise to stardom.

Joe co-wrote and styled a part of Roy Orbison’s career that we love so much. If you will glance at the list of songs which comprise the "Lonely and Blue" album, you will see that Joe's name appears as co-writer on no less than five of the songs.

These include "Only The Lonely," and "Blue Angel." Joe would later co-write "Crying," "Blue Bayou," "Running Scared," and others with Orbison.

Together, they developed the style of writing which has served as such a perfect vehicle for the voice of Roy Orbison. It is a tribute to their ability as a team that, over the years, artists continue to latch on to their material.

After almost 65 years of songwriting, Nashville honored Joe Melson with induction to its elite group of writers the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame on October 28, 2018. Learn more about Joe Melson on his website.

You might not know the names of Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, but you know their music. Arriving in Nashville in 1950, the songwriting duo became the first full-time independent songwriters in that musical city.

By the late 1990s, the Bryants had written as many as 6,000 songs and had sold more than 350 million copies worldwide.

In Nashville’s Songwriting Sweethearts, authors Bobbie Malone and Bill C. Malone recount how Boudleaux and Felice, married in 1945, began their partnership as itinerant musicians living in a trailer home and writing their first songs together.

They created classic hits that pushed the boundaries of country music into the realms of pop and rock. Songs like “Bye Bye Love,” “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” The Buddy Holly song, “Raining In My Heart,” and the infectious “Rocky Top” inspired young musicians everywhere. Here, for the first time, is a complete biography of Nashville’s power songwriting couple. Get your copy today.