Many thanks again to Richard Verdugo ([email protected]) for his painstaking efforts of typing this up. These are the liner notes from one of the Charley/Sun Vinyl releases and contains  some interesting facts relating to Roy's early years at Sun records.

ROY ORBISON - THE SUN YEARS - 2 RECORD SET - CHARLY RECORDS - 1984

  Liner Notes:

  This double-album is, we hope, the definitive account of the early recording
  career of Roy Orbison. Essentially, you will hear Roy Orbison in the context
  of the distinctive, driving Sun Records' sound, Memphis rockabilly. However,
  you will also clearly hear the origins of the ballad style with which Roy
  later came to fame.

  In the early 1960's, Roy was the man in black with the massive,
  faultlessly-crafted hair style and dark glasses, standing motionless behind
  his guitar while performing such super-selling rock ballads as: "Only The
  Lonely", "Crying", "Dream Baby", and "Blue Bayou". These were story songs
  constructed in a simple mournful mould with storming falsetto crescendos.
  They were good pop songs and they were different. They sold millions.

  Back in 1956 when Roy first came to Sun Records, he was a rocker. He had
  developed a powerful guitar style and forceful rockabilly sound that was
  equally as prominent as his even then unusual high-pitched vocals. It is
  often forgotten that Roy was, and is, a hell of a guitar player but these
  Sun recordings make it clear just how good he could be. They also show what
  a fine rock and roll band the Teen Kings could have become had they not
  split up in 1957.

  This compilation includes all the recordings Roy and the Teen Kings made in
  1956 and 1957 as well as the recordings Roy made with Sun's studio
  musicians. We have included some alternate takes that have not been issued
  before and we have also found several demos that Roy made in his emerging
  rock ballad style. Finally, we have used the recordings that Roy made as
  session musician and back-up vocalist.

  When you listen to this set you will hear a young emerging individualist,
  determined to make his way in the music business and caught up in the spirit
  of the times. Today, Roy Orbison has reservations about this music, though
  he need not have. He was among the best rockabilly singers to emerge from
  the South in the mid 1950's and, while he only saw limited success on Sun
  Records, he made some fine and exciting music that has weathered the years
  amazingly well.

  SAM PHILLIPS

  "My aim at Sun Records was always to look for what was different in a singer
  or a player, and what I found in Roy Orbison was that he was a superlative
  and very stylised lead guitar player. I felt that he had the potential to be
  one of the really great rockers. I really did. I thought that was his main
  instinct, even though he had a voice that was somewhat different and
  undoubtedly did also lend itself to the ballads that he later became famous  for.

  Roy had a very definite feel for rock. That was unusual in someone who had a
  voice of the range he had. That was what I found significant about Roy Orbison.

  Roy had a very young group of boys from Texas. They came in to us early in
  1956 and at that time they were really just good musicians by instinct. They
  had a real good feel, though anything but polished. They were young, but
  they were the nucleus of a super rock group.

  An unusual feature was that Roy's group included a mandolin player. I liked
  that. It gave an overtone, a flavor to his music that made it feel and sound  a little different.

  I don't think people generally know how good a guitar player Roy was. He
  used alot of the bass strings. He would do a lot of combonation string
  stuff, but it was all pushing real good. It was strong. Also, Roy had
  probably the best ear for a beat of anybody I recorded outside of Jerry Lee
  Lewis. Roy would take his guitar by himself and if we had a session going he
  would come in early and pick an awful lot just warming up and getting his
  fingers working. His timing would amaze me, with him playing lead and
  filling in with some rhythm licks. I would kid him about it. I said "Roy,
  what you're trying to do is to get rid of everybody else and do it all  yourself".

  Roy just hated to lay his guitar down. he was always either writing or
  developing a beat or an approach to what he was doing. He was totally
  preoccupied with making records at that time.

  On stage, Roy did want to show well. It concerned him, and it really
  shouldn't have. He was a standstiller, but on the other hand he could get so
  much out of his guitar and his band had such a good stage sound at that time
  that they did real well. Part of it was that Roy was very myopic and he
  really needed to wear these very thick spectacles. He worried about his
  looks, but to me he looked fine. I said "Look Roy, you're not a beautiful
  boy - neither am I - but you're okay." He was always neatly dressed. He
  reminded me of Elvis a lot, especially his hair. He wanted every hair in
  place even when he was in the studio working.

  Roy and his boys all moved up to Memphis from Texas after came to us, and I
  booked them with Bob Neal on our Stars Incorporated package shows. They
  started out real well but then one day they broke up. It happened really in
  the studio when they were rehearsing. They had some difficulty among them
  and the band really broke up then and there. Really, it was nothing other
  than their being extremely young.

  I think Roy's band was very ambitious. They were influenced by what was
  coming out of Sun and by other rock music, and I feel that if we had been
  able to keep the boys together I probably would not have let Roy go.

  Roy was a very pleasant guy to work around. I never did quite understand the
  arrangement he and the band had as far as the division of the spoils, but I
  feel maybe he was too kind hearted with that. Roy was a super guy, very much
  into his music and very much in love with Claudette, his girlfriend - she
  was the one that later was killed in a motorcycle accident - he was really
  devoted to her. Roy brought Claudette in from Texas, and he wrote the song
  about her while he was with us. Roy was probably one of the more settled
  people in his way of thinking among the people who came to the studio, young
  as he was.

  I never had an argument with Roy about music. We both seemed to feel the
  same about whether a take on a song was good or not. He was a very
  soft-spoken, reticent type of person, very corteous, but I do feel that he
  would have voiced an opinion if he had not felt the same way about his
  recordings as I did.

  It is my regret that I did not do the promotion on Roy - I still had Carl,
  Johnny, and Jerry Lee at that time - and I didn't get into him that way I
  could have done if his band had not broken up when it did. I have to take
  the blame into not bringing Roy into full fruition. Roy continued to work
  with us after the band split, but it wasn't the same.

  Around that time, Roy went to see the Everly Brothers in concert in west
  Tennessee. It was a time when I was loaded down with other work, and Roy
  then met Wesley Rose of of Acuff-Rose publishing through the Everlys. Roy
  was given the oppurtunity of going to Nashville as a songwriter and he came
  back to talk to me about it. I told him that I really didn't want to lose
  him and I felt we could still make him a success, but at the same time I
  didn't want to stand in his way if he felt he could do better.

  If Roy had stayed, I do not feel that we would have gone the route that
  Monument went with him. He loved ballads, but he loved to rock too and I
  feel that he still had several years to make fine rock music. And Roy was a
  perfectionist in the best sense. He was only around us a couple of years,
  but I do think he could have gone on to be established as a real superstrong
  50's rock artist."
 
 

  FACT FILE

  1936 - Born Roy Kelton Orbison, Vernon, Texas on April 23rd.
  1944 - Appeared on KVWC radio Vernon, Texas, aged eight.
  1951 - Radio show on KERB, Kermit, Texas.
  1952 - Formed counrty band, the Wink Westerners
  1954 - Regular T.V. shows on KOSA, Odessa and KMID, Midland, Texas.
  1955 - Met Wade Moore and Dick Penner and learned "Ooby Dooby"
  - Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash on Roy's T.V. show
  - Recorded "Ooby Dooby" and "Trying To Get To You".
  1956 - "Ooby Dooby" released on Je-Wel 101 by Roy's group now called the Teen
  Kings
  - Auditioned for Columbia Records, who refused "Ooby Dooby" but issued the
  the song by Sid King and the 5 Strings
  - "Tryin' To Get To You" leased to Imperial.
  Issued but credited to Weldon Rodgers, owner of Je-Wel Records.
  - March: demo session for Sam Phillips at Sun with the Teen Kings
  - May: "Ooby Dooby" b/w "Go ! Go ! Go !" issued on Sun 242. Sold a quarter
  of a million copies. Reached number 59 in the pop charts, the best
  selling rockabilly single on Sun apart from those of Presely,
  Perkins, Cash, and Lewis.
  - Moved his hom to Memphis
  - Signed to Stars Inc. booking agency, Memphis. Toured the South, South
  West, and Canada 1956 and 1957 with Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Warren
  Smith, Sonny Burgess, Billy Riley and Eddie Bond.
  - September: "You're My Baby" b/w "Rockhouse" issued on Sun 251
  1957 - Warren Smith has pop hit with Roy's song "So Long I'm Gone"
  - January: "Sweet And Easy To Love" b/w "Devil Doll" issued on Sun 265
  - The Teen Kings split up
  - December: "Chicken Hearted" b/w "I Like Love" issued on Sun 284.
  1958 - Helped produce Sun sessions for Rudy Grayzell, Ken Cook, Vernon
  Taylor, and Jerry McGill
  - Everly Brothers score pop hit with Roy's "Claudette"
  - Roy leaves Sun
  - Roy joins Acuff-Rose as a songwriter
  - Roy joins RCA as a recording artist, based in Nashville.
  1961 - Sun issues LP 1260 'Roy Orbison At The Rockhouse'.
 
 

  ROY ORBISON

  "My first music was country. I grew up with country music in Texas. When I
  was about six I remember I used to sing Bob Willis' "Dusty Skies". Ernest
  Tubb used to advertise milk in those days, singing off the back of a truck
  in Fort Worth when I was there. The first stage show I saw was Bill and Joe
  Callahan and the next one was Lefty Frizzell when I was ten years old. There
  was alot of music to be heard back then.

  I started playing guitar and singing when I was six years old and I had my
  own radio show when I was eight. Then when I was fifteen I had another show
  and finally when I was eighteen I got this television show in on KOSA,
  Odessa, and KMID, Midland. Television was very new to West Texas. I didn't
  see a T.V. set at all until 1953. At that same time there was a contest in
  Odessa which I won. The prize was a thirth minute spot on T.V. Then I
  suggested to the owner of a furniture store that he sponsor two shows a
  week. The guy was so successful that he opened the biggest furniture store
  in West Texas. So, I had this long background behind me before I made the
  big plunge into professional music.

  Elvis and Johnny Cash came through Odessa when they were new on Sun Records,
  and they appeared on my television show to promote their concerts. At the
  same time I was in college and the previous year one of my classmates, Pat
  Boone, had started recording. These people were all doing what I wanted to
  do, but I guess I was just in the wrong place at the right time. Anyway, I
  wanted to get a diploma in case I didn't make it in the music business. In
  the end though I decided that I didn't want to do anything halfway so I
  jumped right into the music business.

  The boys and I went to Norman Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico. I was
  the first to use it other than Norman who used it to record his own trio. He
  built it for them. We hired the studio to make "Ooby Dooby". That was a song
  I heard at North Texas University. I met two guys there, Wade Moore and Dick
  Penner, who had written the song and were singing it. I took it back to West
  Texas University with me and it became very popular. I figured that what it
  was dong locally it might do nationally and sure enough it did. We issued it
  first on Je-Wel Records locally and soon after that I took it to Columbia
  Records in Dallas but they didn't issue it.

  When I called Sam Phillips at Sun it was on the advice of Johnny Cash. I
  told Sam that Johnny had said that I might be able to get on his label. He
  said "Johnny Cash doesn't run my record company" and hung up on me. Anyway,
  a little later I played my demo for Cecil Hollifield who was our sponsor,
  and he played for Sam Phillips on the phone. Sam said "Send it to me. I
  can't tell nothing over the phone." So Cecil sent it and Sam called back and
  said "Can those boys be here in three days ?" Then we dashed off to Memphis
  and re-recorded "Ooby Dooby". The Sun version is a little more intense, has
  a little more drive.

  Sam Phillips put me with Bob Neal as booking agent. We played all these
  unbelievable little towns, Johnny Cash and I, until 1958. We were mostly
  trying to make stage shows out of one hit record, which was very difficult.
  So we used to jump around like a bunch of idiots. Well, wait a minute,
  Johnny Cash didn't. I never toured with Elvis but he came backstage at a
  show I played in Memphis when "Ooby Dooby" was number one. That was at the
  Overton Park Shell. The rockabilly music and stage shows were all very new
  then. Often no one knew quite what we were doing. They could identify a
  little with Johnny Cash but once you got more progressive than that, it was
  beyond them. Very frantic, hectic shows.

  There were some strange happenings. Once I played the University of Arkansa
  and the people there said they had a young man who wanted to sing with me,
  so I said that he should come up. But he played all my numbers - before me.
  I couldn't believe it. So I went ahead and sang them all over again anyway.
  It was Ronnie Hawkins. Later I sang him the song "Mary Lou", then he went
  off and recorded it. He made made a big hit before I ever made it.

  Another time, in Albuquerque, Sonny Burgess was travelling to a show with
  Johnny Cash because his car had broken down. We had to leave alot of gear
  behind and the show was a disaster. Sonny had dyed his hair red, had a red
  Fender Guitar and red shoes. In the car afterwards Sonny said to me "They'll
  always remember us in Albuquerque as the Wink Wildcat and the Red Clown."

  Mostly the Sun artists bought clothes from Lansky's on Beale street in
  Memphis. Bright colors and lace shirts. I normally wore white shoes on stage
  but on one occasion a fellow called Jimmy Williams gave me a pair of gold
  shoes that were meant for display. I wore them anyway. And I had black peg
  pants that were very tight at the bottom and a coat in a wild color like
  green or pink. Actually the turned up collar, the pegged pants and the
  ducktail were of Mexican origin. My big ambition was to own a new cadillac
  before I was twenty one years old. A cadillac and a diamond ring ! That's
  what everybody wanted.

  At Sun we played our own instrument. It was unusual for people to go into a
  studio to record popular records without back up musicians and orchestras.
  You couldn't go back and overdub. All the records were done on the spot.
  Another thing was that the studio was a tiny place. When heavy drumming came
  on the scene you had to sing over everything. Recording was a process of
  cancellation. Whatever was the loudest came through. Presley, Cash, Perkins,
  Lewis, we all developed strong voices through this.

  Sam Phillips' contribution was to get us to sing with soul before the word
  was invented and to get us to project. If we didn't do those things, we
  wouldn't get recorded. But Sam wanted us to do the same as everyone he had
  been recording. He would bring out those old thick 78's of Arthur Crudup or
  he would play "Mystery Trainm" and say "This is how I want you to sound".
  He'd say "Sing like that", meaning we shold sing with feeling. We'd try to
  please him and still stay ourselves you know.

  Sam Phillips was a very likeable and affable man. But I couldn't do what I
  wanted to do. By the time I left Sun I wanted to do the kind of material
  that I eventually wound up doing a couple of years later. Sam taught me alot
  about the business and contracts - afterwards. That, the terms of my
  contract, plus the fact no one had told me I should be collectiong
  composer's royalties was the main reason I left Sun at the end of two years.

  Jack Clement did do some sessions with me where we got into a different
  style of music, but I remember him also telling me not be a ballad singer.
  He told me I'd never make it. Even today Jack still says "Stay away from
  those ballads, Orby".

  "Claudette" was one of the new style songs that I wrote at Sun. I was doing
  a show with the Everly Brothers and just as I was leaving the dressing room
  they asked me if I had any material. I said I had this one song and I sang
  it to them. They said they would like to record it so I wrote it out on the
  back of a cardboard box and they went back to Nashville with it. That was
  how I got my introduction to Nashville as a songwriter.

  After I left Sun, I still went back there with friends and to meet people.
  Elvis, Johnny, Carl, Jerry, after our success we all went back to Sun. It
  was sort of a meeting place. It was our starting place, a beginning.

  ________________________________________________________________________________
 

  Recommended Compact Discs with Roy's Sun material:

  Roy Orbison - The Sun Years - 1989 - Rhino Records - Catalog # R2 70916 - U.S.
  Roy Orbison - The Rocker - 1996 - Charly Records - Catalog # CPCD 8180 - U.K.
  Roy Orbison - The Sun Years 1956 - 1958 - The Definitive Edition - 1989 -
  Bear Family Records - Catalog # BCD 15461 - Germany
 

  Also Recommended:
  Are You Ready ? - Roy Orbison & The Teen Kings - Previously Unissued 1956
  Recordings - 1995 - Roller Coaster Records - Catalog # RCCD 3012 - U.K.

                                             
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