Roy Orbison's Sun Recordings Roy Orbison. Orbison, still in Texas began writing with Joe Melson, who led a group in Midland called the Cavaliers. Together they wrote the hit "Uptown," which sold better than any single since "Ooby Dooby". Looking for a follow-up, Melson showed Orbison a piece of a song he had been working on called "Only the Lonely". This song was the "first song that truly probed the frightening potential of Orbison's voice." In the early sixties Orbison reached his first peak period from 1961-1964. Despite the lack of commercial success Orbison looked back at his time at Sun Records as an
Roy Orbison commercial failure of Orbison's work at MGM. Engineer Bill Porter agreed that Orbison's best work could only be achieved with RCA Nashville's A-Team. Orbison's first collection at MGM, an album titled "There Is Only One Roy Orbison", sold fewer than 200,000 copies. With the onset of the British Invasion in 1964–65, the direction of popular music shifted dramatically, and most performers of Orbison's generation were driven from the charts. While on tour again in the UK in 1966, Orbison broke his foot falling off a motorcycle in front of thousands of screaming fans at a race track; he performed his