30/11/2025
Our final magazine of 2025 (issue 207, December) chronicles Roy Orbison’s activities from October to December 1956, then follows them through to the end of 1959. In issue 205 we covered Roy’s early life and recording career including the success of his Sun single ‘Ooby Dooby’. However, Orbison had a hard time trying to maintain the success of this platter and his follow-up singles for the label didn’t do too well despite often good reviews in the trade press. In 1958 he left Sun for RCA, but the two singles he cut there failed to reignite his career. It wasn’t until July’59 when he was signed to Monument, a small label from Washington D.C. founded by Fred Foster, that things began to improve. The first single – ‘The Bug’/’Paper Boy’ was a fine outing but it was the follow-up ‘Up Town’ which proved a small success entering the lower reaches of the Billboard popular chart. It was co-written by Roy in partnership with Joe Melson although it was the third Monument single ‘Only the Lonely’, another Orbison/Melson collaboration, that firmly established Roy as a top act. However, this came in 1960 so just outside the timeframe covered in this issue.
In his personal life Roy married Claudette Frady in August 1957 and ‘Claudette’, the song he wrote for her, was propelled to fame by the Everly Brothers. It was the flip of their huge hit ‘All I Have to Do Is Dream’ but also became a big seller in its own right on both the Billboard pop and country listings. It was more evidence of Orbison’s prowess as a songwriter. Presented in our much-appreciated day-by-day format, the front cover carries a period shot of Roy and, as always, the feature is loaded with lots of rare photos, ads, some superb newspaper clippings and colour label scans of his contemporary Sun, RCA, and Monument releases. As a bonus there are also shots of the labels/sleeves of the iconic Orbison UK London EP ‘Hillbilly Rock’ which comprised Sun material.
We conclude this 76 page issue with a traditional article in Swedish about Bob Fish, the well known leader of Johnny and the Roccos. Bob is a Scotsman, guitarist and singer who, with his various line-ups of the Roccos, have excellently supported so many great American acts over here, but who also made a big name for themselves in their own right , having established a large following among rockabilly fans over the years since starting-out in the 1970s
