Roy Orbison and His Nashville Recordings, 20 Years After His Death

Fred Foster thought a young Roy Orbison—pale, scrawny and exceedingly reticent—was the antithesis of a rock star when the two met in early 1959. Orbison wasn't overly excited about meeting Foster, either. The ghostly West Texas singer slept through the start of his first Nashville recording session with Monument Records, which Foster owned. Rustled from his hotel bed more than an hour after he was scheduled to start work at RCA Studio B, Orbison arrived at the session underwhelmed at the prospect of recording for an unproven, newly formed independent label.

But Orbison would quickly change his tune. Despite its tentative start, the creative relationship of Orbison and Foster would indeed prove monumental; the music they created would influence generations of singers across a variety of genres. With the 20th anniversary of Orbison's death on Dec. 6, and with the recent release of a career-defining box set, Roy Orbison: The Soul of Rock and Roll, it's an apt time to reflect on how several of pop music's most timeless and artful songs unexpectedly emerged from a small Nashville recording studio on 17th Avenue.

By the time Orbison met Foster, the singer had rushed through two significant record deals, and his career teetered toward oblivion. Sam Phillips, through his label Sun Records, had produced a series of Orbison singles, and though "Ooby Dooby" and "Rockhouse" are prized by rockabilly fans today, they were only minor regional hits. Orbison's work on Sun didn't establish him as a groundbreaking stylist in the way it had for labelmates Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash.

Orbison left Sun and Memphis to sign with RCA Records and to work with Chet Atkins in Nashville, hoping to capture the stardust Atkins sprinkled on rock hits by Elvis and the Everly Brothers. But after one unsuccessful single, RCA refused to put out a second, deeming the follow-up recording as too weak.

By late 1958, Orbison must've wondered if his dream of was over. "He told me he and his wife Claudette would take flour and water, roll them into balls and fry them," Foster says. "That would be their meal."

Orbison was managed by Wesley Rose, head of the music publishing powerhouse Acuff-Rose Publications. One afternoon, Rose ran into Foster, a Maryland resident in town to record songs for the label he'd started a few months earlier. Rose asked Foster if he'd consider signing the floundering Orbison.

Foster had a willingness to gamble—and little to lose. A veteran record promoter in the D.C. area, Foster had enjoyed one hit with his new label in its first year, Billy Grammer's "Gotta Travel On." The second act Foster signed, Billy Graves, abruptly quit after three singles, saying the performing life wasn't for him.

Orbison wasn't exactly thrilled that, after the excitement of signing with RCA, he'd so quickly found himself with a little-known upstart. Boudleaux Bryant once told Foster that Orbison looked at the move from RCA to Monument as "trading a mule for a picture of a racehorse."

Rose demanded that Foster re-record the single RCA had passed on. When released on Monument, it did just as poorly as RCA had predicted.

After that, Foster asserted himself. The producer thought Orbison's voice, with its fragile beauty, got lost amid the forceful thump of rocking arrangements. Foster wanted the arrangements to have more space to showcase Orbison's voice, and he wanted to bring in a string section and harmony singers to soften the background. When Rose walked into the session for "Uptown," Orbison's next recording, he chastised Foster for hiring so many fiddle players. "They're violinists, Wes," Foster replied. Rose retorted, "Well, you're wasting your money."

"Uptown" was a finger-snapping tune, yet a bit more sophisticated than Orbison's rockabilly work. It succeeded enough to encourage the ambitious Foster. He decided to spend several weeks with Orbison, encouraging his songwriting. The songs Orbison played for Foster included a dramatic teen-death ballad, a popular theme at the time, and a sketchy tune with the title "Only the Lonely" that the producer liked, but thought was too short and unfinished.

The death ballad, "Come Back to Me My Love," featured a background vocal segment that went, "Dum dum dum, dum bee doo wah," which Foster liked. One sleepy-eyed morning, as he crossed a parking lot on his way for coffee, he hummed this vocal part, but then, instead of the original song's chorus, he hummed the chorus of "Only the Lonely."

Foster doesn't know why the idea to combine parts of two songs dawned on him; it just presented itself as a gift. "I ran back to Roy's room, woke him up and said, 'We've got it,' " says Foster, now 77 years old and still active as a producer. Orbison tried the re-figured song on guitar, and it worked.

Foster organized a recording session for the next day. Anita Kerr, Nashville's best string and vocal arranger, brought her harmony quartet. She helped with the song's arrangement, but on the first take, Foster thought the harmonies sounded too polished for the moody song.

"Joe Melson, who co-wrote 'Only the Lonely,' was a singer too, and his voice had more air than tongue," Foster says. "I told him, 'Get in there and sing with Anita's quartet.' I featured his voice up front, but the quartet gave the harmonies the weight they needed."