Lonely And Blue is Roy Orbison’s first album, released in 1961. The album was not only a breakthrough for Orbison as his debut LP, but also for Rock & Roll. Up to that point, apart from Elvis Presley – who was in a class by himself – few white rock & rollers had even tried to make as bold a use of the LP as what we hear on this record.

Lonely And Blue is a huge canvas for a sound that combined Rock

& Roll’s beat, Nashville’s sound, and the singer’s unique multi-octave range and intensity. The single “Only The Lonely” is perhaps the most accessible and commercial side of this new sound, but the whole album is packed with great moments.

The material was uniformly strong and consistent, probably due, in part, to the fact that producer Fred Foster was able to draw from nearly a year’s worth of recording activity to assemble the contents of the album. Foster also took advantage of the album’s stereo release to devise a crisp, discreet, two-channel mix that brought out all of the details of this sound in notably sharp relief, creating one of the earliest stereo rock & roll albums that was actually superior to its mono equivalent. Indeed, Sings Lonely and Blue was among the first rock & roll LPs to attract the interest of serious audiophile enthusiasts.