ALBUMS: Roy Orbison’s Greatest Hits (1962), 4.5/$$$; All Time Greatest Hits (1986), 4.0/$$$. <both docked a half point for not having Pretty Woman.>
Orbison’s heydey was shortly after I was born. . I probably heard his songs Only the Lonely and Crying at sweaty sock hops in a gym in Indiana.
Hey what’s a guy and gal to do in rural Indy after corning cars, skating at the roller rink, and playing pinball at the laundromat.
So Orbison provided a lot of slow dance material. Sad rejection crying and whining even to some degree but it was slow dance material for sure.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention there were hay rides.
I was the new kid coming from Georgia to a place that didn’t get many new kids. I didn’t know to much about hay rides but I said:
“Hey.”
Now.
Indiana, where I lived for three years growing up — 7th, 8th and 9th grades — is loaded with coming-of-age tales — and I don’t mean that sexually, well maybe I do: we were puppets of a biological force we had no idea how to control or live with. My school was called Klondike Junior High School and our nickname was the Nuggets.
In Indiana?
Where the only gold was corn aging in the fields, awaiting frustrated teenagers to come and get these hard golden kernels to rattle some car radiators.
But I digress. Damn did I digress.
Roy Orbison. His voice was one of the best in rock music. You’ve heard of singers who can break a light bulb with the sonic frequencies. Well Orbison’s multi-octave voice could unscrew the light bulb, set it gently down on a bed of feathers.
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, hey I want you and I want you only — “Thunder Road,” Bruce Springsteen.
WIkipedia writes: Tim Goodwin, who conducted the orchestra that backed Orbison in Bulgaria, had been told that Orbison’s voice would be a singular experience to hear. When Orbison started with “Crying” and hit the high notes, Goodwin stated: “The strings were playing and the band had built up and, sure enough, the hair on the back of my neck just all started standing up. It was an incredible physical sensation .
The video below was of the Traveling Willburys filmed after Roy died. His voice is on it and note Orbison’s framed portrait on the wall..
T
These albums I own have virtually the same line-up, but there is one big difference. The second, newer one, is re-recorded. Yes, they are not the original hits, which ticked me off — and i’m sure others felt the same way when they found out. It’s not prominently mentioned on the cover. But after getting over the initial ripped-off feeling, I listened to it and, you know, it’s not bad. Heck, if Roy Orbison needs to be covered, who better than the Big O.
Musically the sound is a little softer on the re-recorded one, but it’s still Orbison’s voice on this double album.
ALBUMS: Contender w/ the X-Rays (1981); Eye of the Storm (1983)
MVC Rating: Contender 4.0/$$$; Eye of the Storm 3.5/$$
Five-dollar cover was a lot back in the day. That was the cost of a brand new album.
But for that $5 bill you would get into the little roadhouse club called the Casino in Auburn Ala. with live music and 50-cent longneck Budweisers. One of the best bands through was David Olney and the X-Rays. (Not to be confused with David Lindley and EL Rayo X).
He had a whole array of upbeat love songs and gritty story-songs such as Wait Here for the Cops, Oh My Love, Contender and Love and Money.
I found his 1981 album in an Auburn record store and am glad to have it. Many years later after starting this blog I picked up another Olney record for $2 at Charlemagne. It’s called Eye of the Storm. Not as good for me as the Contender album probably due to my emotional/nostalgia hook. But pretty good music nonetheless in a more Americana style.
The a capella ‘Ain’t it That Way” and the title song really stand out
WIkipedia reports that over the last few decades songs have been covered by and co-written with Emmylou Harris, Stee Earle, Linda Rondstadt, Steve Young, Del McCoury and Laurie Lewis.
He was friends with Townes Van Zandt, reported the ‘Nashville Scene,’ who said of Olney:
Anytime anyone asks me who my favorite music writers are, I say Mozart, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bob Dylan, and Dave Olney. Dave Olney is one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard – and that’s true. I mean that from my heart.
I am indeed here. Took a few days off over the holidays. Went to see family in Georgia. Meant or intended to blog, ruminate. But I felt repelled from going into my blog and writing for some reason. I felt empty. Not so much empty like void of all thoughts. But empty like no gasoline to go. I felt tired of thinking about my brain. My brain felt tired of being used by me. It was so bad I went to WUXTRY — my old record store from High School and college days — and and couldn’t find anything I wanted. That’s a rarity of a different level of scarcity.
Now what.
I came home Monday and went to work Tuesday only to find that Charlemagne Records after 42 years of business at Five Points on Birmingham’s Southside is shutting down. Is this a signal of things to come? Has vinyl peaked?
I don’t think so from what I read. More later on that topic.
I’m behind on my reviews for the Countdown. of my 678 vinyl records. I ‘ve added to that number through some purchases and gifts at birthdays, Christmas, etc.. Plus I’m slowing down. Heck at this rate I’ll never die.
Inecentives on this blog deal are inverted.
Like our health care.
The high deductible model incentivises people not to go to the doctor because you have to pay bucks, sometimes big bucks. So you going put off going put off going. Then your leg needs amputating. How is that good health care?
Or your chest cold turns into pneumonia and you die.
It’s always back to dying with me, isn’t it. Well it’s a thing that happens to everyone who lives. Don’t want to die? Don’t live.
The album I picked up by mistake. I saw the name Hurley and thought it was this group I heard about called Michael Hurley and the Holy Modal Rounders.
This was more than 30 years ago in Birmingham, although I liked the record with its full-throated backing gospel choir. The music was soul-inflected gospel with a hint of country. For years I thought Hurley on my album “John Hurley Delivers One More Hallelujah’ to be a black man. Just based on his vocals, the hallelujah choir and there were no pictures on the album and no Internet to disprove my pre-judgement.
Like I said I enjoyed the album but I had hundreds of albums before boxing them up and embracing the digital age. So, to be honest about it, after three children three states and 100s of CD’s , I never heard about John Hurley again and forgot that album languishing in hap-hazard alphabetical order in about six boxes.
As those of you know who have followed my column , I am chronicling and reviewing my album collection on my site as I count down my 678 (and growing) number of albums.
This is to raise awareness for Lewy body dementia which is the second leading cause of progressive dementia after Alzheimer’s. Please check out the About Me button on my blog for more on Lewy.
Moving, raising a family and all that put some pressure on my records to be sold, but I held on Alabama, Georgia, Florida, California and now back to Alabama.
Meanwhile back at the vinyl countdown. I had stored away my records for decades, became an early adopter of an iPod and Apple streaming music. But I always vowed that even if I have to wait to retirement I’ll get those records out and have a listening room (AKA ‘Man Cave”). This was an idea long before I became ill. The Lewy diagnosis just gave me a deadline about three years ago I started this blog, to have fun mostly but also to raise awareness to this crummy disease.
So back to Hurley. He resurfaced in my consciousness when I got down to the ‘H’s ( I am now on the ‘N’s in my alphabetical countdown.) I listened to the album again and was really impressed. So I did more research and found out he grew up in a poor neighborhood in Pittsburgh. He worked and lived in Nashville for a while . He and his songwriting partner Ronnie Wilkins had a big moment in Muscle Shoals when Jerry Hall asked them to do a song for Aretha Franklin. They came back with “Son of a Preacher Man,” a worldwide hit for Dusty Springfield. Aretha covered it later to good success but not as big as Springfield’s hit.
I knew that song well, sang it on the way to church on Sundays when it came on in the car. My attention then focused on a song that I heard so many accolades but was relatively unfamiliar with it. It was called ‘Living on the Love of the Common People.”
I found his first album ‘John Hurley Sings to the People.” That had the Common People song. I was blown away again. ‘Sweet Pain’ is another great song off of that album.
The Common People song was a simple tune and simple words that came together with the ability to pull tears out of your eyes, especially if you watch the video of the song put together by Hurley’s son from family pictures. I was happy to have found these records and so now I’m looking for his third and last album. In the record store recently I found Hurley but it was the same album I had for so many years: John Hurley Delivers One More Hallelujah. Only this one had a birthday wish written in ink on the cover by presumably Hurley himself. See the picture.
Here’s the Happy Birthday message on an album I bought by John Hurt. Hurt, a singer-songwriter, grew up poor in Pittsburgh. He wrote several major hits but died relatively unknown at age 45.
I would love to find more information about this. Who’s Mom? Is this indeed from John Hurley?
I have tried to reach Hurley’s son, Ron, to no avail at this point.
John died in 1986 at age 45 of liver failure and brain failure, according to Wikipedia.
Meanwhile, another clue appeared on the same YouTube comment section suggesting Hurley at one point or several points in his life stayed or lived in Birmingham.
Here’s a post on the YouTube thread posted eight years ago.
@ronhurley1961 John Hurley was one of the, if not the most talented people that I have ever known. I met him when I was 17 years old in Birmingham Alabam at Bob Groves recording studio. He was there recording a friend of mine named Mike Gunnels. He drove a red sports car and always wore sunglasses. He stayed at my house and honored me with his friendship. That was over 40 years ago and I miss him to this day. He recorded the album “Street Gospel” shortly after and it is still my favorite.
NOTE TO READERS: The commenter’s user name was WiseGuyDogs1 and 8 years was how long ago this comment was published. Also ‘Street Gospel’ was the same record as ‘John Hurley Sings for the Common People.’ Lastly Mike Gunnels was the leader of a band called Hard Times, which later changed its name to Rites of Spring. They were considered by my own anecdotal research to be the best band in Birmingham for a few years there in the 1960s. Attempts to reach Gunnels were unsuccessful.
Among those dozen or so who have covered the song are Waylon Jennings, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Young, the Everly Brothers, and the Four Preps.
END NOTE: Those familiar with www.myvinylcountdown.com know that I have been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a fatal disease which will likely kill me. Meanwhile, I have been reviewing my collection — I’m at nearly 400 reviewed now at my website. on my way to 678. I am going in alphabetical order (more or less).
