Monday 10/4/21 7pm ET: History of Rock and Roll (Hour 6)

Friday 12/4/2020 2pm ET: Feature Artist – Roy Orbison (1936 – 1988)

Roy Kelton Orbison (April 23, 1936 – December 6, 1988) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician known for his impassioned singing style, complex song structures, and dark, emotional ballads. His music was described by critics as operatic, earning him the nicknames “the Caruso of Rock” and “the Big O”. Many of Orbison’s songs conveyed vulnerability at a time when most male rock-and-roll performers chose to project defiant masculinity. He was known for his shyness and stage fright, which he countered by wearing dark sunglasses.

Orbison began singing in a rockabilly and country-and-western band at high school. He was signed by Sam Phillips of Sun Records in 1956, but enjoyed his greatest success with Monument Records. From 1960 to 1966, 22 of Orbison’s singles reached the Billboard Top 40. He wrote or co-wrote almost all of his own Top 10 hits, including “Only the Lonely” (1960), “Running Scared” (1961), “Crying” (1961), “In Dreams” (1963), and “Oh, Pretty Woman” (1964). Beginning in the mid-1960s, Orbison suffered a number of personal tragedies and his career faltered.

Orbison experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s following the success of several cover versions of his songs. In 1988, he co-founded the Traveling Wilburys (a rock supergroup) with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne. Orbison died of a heart attack in December 1988 at age 52. One month later, his song “You Got It” (1989) was released as a solo single, becoming his first hit to reach the U.S. Top 10 in nearly 25 years.

Orbison’s honors include inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989, and the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2014. He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and five other Grammy Awards. Rolling Stone placed him at number 37 on its list of the “Greatest Artists of All Time” and number 13 on its list of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time”. In 2002, Billboard magazine listed him at number 74 on its list of the Top 600 recording artists.

Orbison performed at the Front Row Theater in Highland Heights, Ohio on December 4, 1988. Exhausted, he returned to his home in Hendersonville to rest for several days before flying again to London to film two more videos for the Traveling Wilburys. On December 6, 1988, he spent the day flying model airplanes with his sons and ate dinner at his mother’s home in Hendersonville. Later that day, he died of a heart attack at the age of 52.

A memorial for Orbison was held in Nashville, and another was held in Los Angeles. He was buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in an unmarked grave.

Thursday 9pm: Across The Tracks: Featuring – One (Part 7)

This installment of Across The Tracks feature tune with “ONE” in the title.  We’ll feature music from Pam Tillis, Roy Orbison, Barry Manilow, TG Sheppard, Bruce Springsteen, Space Monkey, Osmonds, Association and much more across the tracks and genres.  

Thursday 10pm: Feature LP: Roy Orbison – Black and White 30 (2017)

Roy Kelton Orbison (April 23, 1936 – December 6, 1988) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician known for his powerful voice, wide vocal range, impassioned singing style, complex song structures, and dark, emotional ballads. The combination led many critics to describe his music as operatic, nicknaming him “the Caruso of Rock” and “the Big O”. While most male rock-and-roll performers in the 1950s and 1960s projected a defiant masculinity, many of Orbison’s songs instead conveyed vulnerability. His voice ranged from baritone to tenor, and music scholars have suggested that he had a three- or four-octave range. During performances, he was known for standing still and solitary, and for wearing black clothes, to match his dyed jet-black hair and dark sunglasses, which lent an air of mystery to his persona.

A Black & White Night Live is a Roy Orbison music album made posthumously by Virgin Records from the HBO television special, Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night, which was filmed in 1987 and broadcast in 1988. According to the official Roy Orbison discography by Marcel Riesco, the album was released in October 1989 and included the song “Blue Bayou” which because of time constraints had been deleted from the televised broadcast. However it did not include the song “Claudette” and “Blue Angel” which were also cut from the original broadcast for the same reason. The SACD/CD Hybrid Audio Disc includes “Blue Angel” as a bonus track – the SACD/CD Hybrid Disc is contained in a pack with the DVD released by Image Entertainment, USA (ID27700BDVD). “Claudette” was included in later releases of the concert. According to Riesco’s discography, all tracks are now released on the 30 year anniversary “Black & White Night 30.”

On piano was Glen D. Hardin, who had played piano for Buddy Holly as well as Elvis Presley. Lead guitarist James Burton, drummer Ronnie Tutt and bassist Jerry Scheff were also from Presley’s group. Male background vocals and some guitars were provided by Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther and Steven Soles. Female background vocalists were k.d. lang, Jennifer Warnes and Bonnie Raitt.

The show also had a number of celebrities in the audience such as Kris Kristofferson, Billy Idol and Sandra Bernhard.

On February 24, 2017, a 30th anniversary edition, titled Black & White Night 30, was released. The edition has been expanded, re-edited, and remastered, and it is available both as a CD/DVD and a CD/Blu-ray set. This release has sold 161,400 copies as of March 2017.

Vinyl Resting Place with Willie B 10p ET #vrp

This week in the Vinyl Resting Place it’s “Woman”  Featuring hits from Helen Reddy, Bryan Adams, Aretha Franklin, Shania Twain, Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, Chicago, Roy Orbison, The Doors and more.  Check the schedule for encore times if you miss any of this program.  Hosted by your Vinyl Master Willie B!

Feature Year: 1988 (Part 1 – 9am / Part 2 – 9pm ET) @RadioMax

January 3 – The Cinemax television special Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night, recorded on September 30, 1987 at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, USA, is broadcast.
January 20 – The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony inducts The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Drifters, Bob Dylan and The Supremes.
January 28 – A Tampa, Florida man files an unusual lawsuit against Mötley Crüe. Matthew John Trippe, who has a history of mental health issues and trouble with the law, claims that he was secretly hired to pose as Nikki Sixx and toured, wrote and recorded with the band for a time during 1983 and 1984. Trippe drops the lawsuit in 1993.
March 26 – “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson from the Bad album tops the Billboard Hot 100. It’s the first time in history a solo artist has had four Number One singles from the same album.
April 19 – Former rock and roll singer Sonny Bono is inaugurated as the Mayor of Palm Springs, California, USA.
April 25 – Rock supermanager Doc McGhee is sentenced to five years probation after pleading guilty to charges of drug smuggling stemming from a 1982 seizure of nearly 40,000 pounds of marijuana entering North Carolina from Colombia.
April 30 – The Eurovision Song Contest, held in the RDS Simmonscourt Pavilion, Dublin, is won by French-Canadian singer Celine Dion, representing Switzerland with the song “Ne partez pas sans moi”.
May 14 – Atlantic Records stages a concert at Madison Square Garden celebrating its Fortieth birthday with performances by many of the label’s greatest acts of the past. Artists include Crosby, Stills & Nash, Iron Butterfly, Ruth Brown, Foreigner and Wilson Pickett, but the most talked-about performance is by a reunited Led Zeppelin with Jason Bonham on drums.
May 27 – The Monsters of Rock Tour 1988 commences in East Troy, Wisconsin. Van Halen headlines with the other acts on the massive bill consisting of Metallica, Scorpions, Dokken and Kingdom Come.
June 27 – Motown Records is sold to MCA and an investment firm for $61 million.
July 2 – Michael Jackson with fifth single from Bad, “Dirty Diana”, he broke the record to have five consecutive charting singles from same album at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, is the first artist and only male in history to get this done.
August 12 – Public Enemy garners publicity by staging a concert at Riker’s Island prison for 250 inmates and 100 journalists.
September 6 -9 – Elton John auctions off many items from his personal collection, including memorabilia and stage-worn clothing, at Sotheby’s for a total of $8.5 million. John had been known for wearing flamboyant stage costumes during the glam rock era of the 1970s, but he increasingly abandoned them in later years.
September 10 – Billboard magazine publishes its Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart for the first time.
September 24 – James Brown faces a variety of charges after leading police on an interstate chase, after reportedly breaking into a seminar in an Augusta, Georgia building he owned an office in, waving a gun and demanding to know who had used his restrooms. Earlier in the year Brown had been arrested on drug and firearms-related charges.
September 25 – The Aalto Theatre, Essen, Germany, opens with a performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
October 10 – The new Cairo Opera House is inaugurated by President Hosni Mubarak and Prince Tomohito of Mikasa, brother of the Emperor of Japan. The opening ceremony includes a kabuki performance in recognition of the funds donated by Japan.
November 7 – John Fogerty wins a self-plagiarism lawsuit with Fantasy Records. The record label had contended that Fogerty’s 1985 comeback hit “The Old Man Down the Road” was too similar to his 1970 Creedence Clearwater Revival song, “Run Through the Jungle”.
November 12 – U2’s Rattle and Hum hits the Number One spot on the U.S. charts, the first double album to do so since Bruce Springsteen’s The River in 1980.
December 4 – Singer Roy Orbison gives his last concert in Akron, Ohio, USA, before his death from a massive heart attack.
December 31 – The seventeenth annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve special airs on ABC, with appearances by Natalie Cole, Taylor Dayne, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Richard Marx, Reba McEntire and Frankie Vallie and The Four Seasons.

Also in 1988
Peter Ruzicka becomes director of the Hamburg State Opera and State Philharmonic Orchestra.
Andrew Davis begins a term as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and is appointed musical director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera, effective with the 1989 season.
“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” experiences a surge in popularity in the USA sparked by television commercials featuring claymation raisin figures dancing to the song. The California Raisins version of the song peaks at number 84 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

Source: Wikipedia

 

Artist Countdown: Roy Orbison Top 55 Hits

Roy Orbison (April 23, 1936 – December 6, 1988), a singer-songwriter who found the most success in early rock and roll from 1957 to 1964. During that time, 22 of Orbison’s songs placed on the Billboard Top Forty.

Born and raised in Texas, Orbison got his start in a rockabilly band in high school. He broke into professional music under Sam Phillips at Sun Records, but found only marginal success there. After a couple years writing for other musicians, Orbison recorded several songs at Monument Records under producer Fred Foster. With Foster, Orbison and songwriter Joe Melson tailored many of Orbison’s songs for his unique voice; his most popular songs were dramatic ballads ending with emotional crescendos that showcased his powerful vocals. After his biggest hit in 1964, “Oh, Pretty Woman“, Orbison continued to record, but not until 1987 did he find the success he had once known when his single “In Dreams” was used in David Lynch’s film Blue Velvet. The next year, Orbison recorded with the supergroup Traveling Wilburys alongside Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and George Harrison. Lynne produced Orbison’s final album Mystery Girl, which was released posthumously in February of 1989.

1	You Got It
2	It’s Over
3	Oh, Pretty Woman
4	Only the Lonely (Know the Way I Feel)
5	Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)
6	In Dreams
7	Pretty Paper
8	Blue Bayou
9	That Lovin’ You Feelin’ Again (with Emmylou Harris)
10	Falling
11	Crying (with k.d. lang)
12	Running Scared
13	Mean Woman Blues
14	Crying
15	Goodnight
16	Blue Angel
17	Handle with Care (Traveling Wilburys)
18	Breakin’ Up Is Breakin’ My Heart
19	Ride Away
20	Crawling Back
21	(Say) You’re My Girl
22	California Blue
23	Working for the Man
24	Twinkle Toes
25	The Crowd
26	Too Soon to Know
27	Candy Man
28	Leah
29	I Drove All Night
30	She’s a Mystery to Me
31	End of the Line (Traveling Wilburys)
32	Cry Softly Lonely One
33	Heartbreak Radio
34	Communication Breakdown
35	Lana
36	Borne on the Wind
37	Heartache
38	Penny Arcade
39	Walk On
40	I’m Hurtin’
41	So Good
42	My Friend
43	Distant Drums
44	Beautiful Dreamer
45	Love Hurts
46	She
47	What’d I Say
48	Indian Wedding
49	Born to Be Loved by You
50	Break My Mind
51	Ooby Dooby
52	She Wears My Ring
53	Up Town
54	Let the Good Times Roll
55	Southbound Jericho Parkway

Artist Countdown: Emmylou Harris Top 30 Hits 7:30pm ET

Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She has released many chart-topping albums and singles over the course of her career, and has won 12 Grammys and numerous other awards.

Harris is from a career military family. Her father, Walter Harris, was a military officer and her mother Eugenia was a wartime military wife. Her father, a member of the Marine Corps, was reported missing in action in Korea in 1952 and spent ten months as a prisoner of war. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Harris spent her childhood in North Carolina and Woodbridge, Virginia, where she graduated from Gar-Field Senior High School as class valedictorian. She won a drama scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she began to study music seriously, learning to play the songs of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez on guitar. Leaving college to pursue her musical aspirations, she moved to New York, working as a waitress to support herself while performing folk songs in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. She married fellow songwriter Tom Slocum in 1969 and recorded her first album, Gliding Bird. Harris and Slocum soon divorced, and Harris and her newborn daughter Hallie moved in with her parents in the Maryland suburbs on the edge of Washington, D.C.

In addition to her work as a solo artist and bandleader, both as an interpreter of other composers’ works and as a singer-songwriter, she is a sought-after backing vocalist and duet partner, working with numerous other artists including Gram Parsons, John Denver, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, The Band, Mark Knopfler, Guy Clark, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Rodney Crowell, Little Feat, and Neil Young. -Wikipedia

1	Mister Sandman
2	That Lovin’ You Feeling Again (with Roy Orbison)
3	Wild Montana Skies (with John Denver)
4	(You Never Can Tell) C’est La Vie
5	Together Again
6	Here, There and Everywhere
7	Telling Me Lies (with Dolly Parton & Linda Ronstadt)
8	If I Could Only Win Your Love
9	To Know Him Is to Love Him (with Dolly Parton & Linda Ronstadt)
10	Making Believe
11	To Daddy
12	Sweet Dreams
13	Two More Bottles of Wine
14	Beneath Still Waters
15	If I Needed You (with Don Williams)
16	(Lost His Love) On Our Last Date
17	One of These Days
18	I’m Movin’ On
19	Wayfaring Stranger
20	Blue Kentucky Girl
21	Born to Run
22	Tennessee Rose
23	Wildflowers (with Dolly Parton & Linda Ronstadt)
24	In My Dreams
25	Easy from Now On
26	Pledging My Love
27	White Line
28	The Boxer
29	Save the Last Dance for Me
30	Thing About You (with Southern Pacific)