Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Today’s episode is called RKO and RPO, that’s Roy Orbison and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. We’ll be talking about the album, A Love So Beautiful. The album was released November 3rd, 2017 by Sony Legacy and especially by our Sony Legacy UK team. I met them last week and they’ve done such a great job and I just want to thank everyone down there at the office.

This album is primarily aimed at the UK and Great Britain, Roy’s done fantastically there over the years and there’s so much love for my dad. We’re kind of copying an album that Elvis Presley did in 2015 called If I Can Dream. That album was produced by Don Reidmand and Nick Patrick. The next year, 2016, they did another Elvis album The Wonder of You. After that, they contacted us in 2017 which is Roy’s year with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Those two guys, Don and Nick are great friends, very funny and supremely talented. They both have different gifts that they brought to this, but they honed their craft and developed a market for these Royal Philharmonic Orchestra albums. The album is great and is set to do fantastically. The first single was I Drove All Night with Ward Thomas. Lizzy and Catherine are 23-year-old twins from the UK, they say they’re country music although it’s very poppy and they did a great job singing the duet with Roy. That song charted at number twenty-eight, it was number one on the BBC radio playlist and it did fantastically well.

The second single is coming out right around now and its Love Hurts. A lot of people were surprised that Love Hurts was first recorded by Roy. It was the back of Running Scared in 1960 which was a number one in both the United States and in the UK. Roy was number one with Love Hurts which was also recorded by the Everly Brothers around the same time, but the song was written for Roy Orbison by Boudleaux Bryant. Boudleaux and Felice were Roy’s friends and part of the reason that Roy moved to Nashville. They wrote All I Have to Do Is Dream by the Everly Brothers. They also wrote the song Love Hurts specifically for Roy. Roy was living at their house at the time and because the Everly Brothers had the same publisher as Roy and Boudleaux Bryant they also got a shot in it. Later in the seventies the song was done by Nazareth and that is a version that everyone in England and around the world loves, a kind of scratchy throated version. Roy’s is still the best and is the original. This is going to be fun to see what happens with Love Hurts by Roy Orbison and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 2017. After that we have a Christmas song, Roy’s only Christmas song called Pretty Paper. This will be the Christmas time single, hopefully there will be a fourth single of A Love So Beautiful and even a fifth single later.

It will be closer to April when the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will be touring with Roy Orbison as a hologram presenting these songs. Roy and RPO as we call them his match made in heaven. It’s a 75-piece Orchestra, every one of those people is a master at their instrument and has put in years of sweat and hard work. They’re all so good, I could watch any one of them alone but all together they’re unstoppable. They’ve got a wide range, they can play jazz or country as well as classical. Recently they did the Jaws soundtrack and I miss that show.

The reason that RKO and RPO is such a good combination is that Roy invented orchestral rock back in the 60’s. That kind of music was taken up by Queen and Jeff Lynne. The dramatic invention came about on a specific song called Uptown. Fred Fosters wanted to have strings on the song Uptown as he thought the strings would make it kind of more sophisticated more “uptown.” So, he asked for strings and he thought Fred Foster couldn’t deliver but Fred went out and found a violin teacher and her two students and brought them in. At the time, everyone else in Nashville played fiddle so it was more of a count