GO GO GO BEST OF 1956-62

Vinyl LP pressing. The Caruso of Rock, The Big O, epithets given to one of the greatest singer-songwriters the world has ever known. Winner of five Grammy Awards and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and pride of place in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Roy Orbison quite literally changed the face and sound of popular music. In a career spanning three decades, Orbison was at one point more popular than The Beatles. He revolutionised song structure, and popularised rock in the bolero style, forever changing the genre. Lifelong Orbison fan, Bruce Springsteen said of his hero, he had the ability like all great rock n rollers to sound like he dropped in from another planet and yet get the stuff that was right to the heart of what you were livin in today, and that was how he opened your vision. He was an unlikely pop star with his dark glasses, black outfits and dyed black hair, but somehow it all came together with that powerful, yearning, falsetto voice. Orbisons style and delivery smacked of vulnerability, his dark ballads betraying the fragility of the male ego. He was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1987, and the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame the same year. In 1989 he entered the Musicians Hall Of Fame and Museum, and received a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. Elvis Presley called him the greatest singer in the world, and his influence was immense, with Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, and k.d. Lang all acknowledging the impact The Big O had on their music. These early recordings of the great mans work tell the story of a legend in the making.