Big O: Singles Collection

What it says is what you get. This double-disc collection on Monument collects all of the Roy Orbison singles recorded for the label after he left Sun, and before he left for MGM. In other words, this is CLASSIC Roy. There are 52 cuts from his biggest years, including a couple of German-language versions of "Mama" and "San Fernando." For the uninitiated, this set does leave off cuts such as "Rock House" and "Ooby Dooby," but those can be found easily elsewhere -- on a comp called The Sun Years, for example. This set boils down the big Monument box set to a pair of discs that contain pure gold, revealing the diversity and depth of Orbison's genius as a writer and a singer. From "In Dreams" and "Blue Bayou" to "Shahdaroba" and "Oh, Pretty Woman," all of the bases are covered. The sound quality is an issue, since these tracks come from the original box set, so if you are an audiophile you might want to think twice. ~ Thom Jurek