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Oh, Pretty Woman is Roy Orbison’s True Flat Out Rocker of a Song

Today Trademastr Culture talks about a 1960’s hit that is unique for an artist known for mid- and slower-tempo songs.


Oh, Pretty Woman (1964)
Composed by Roy Orbison and Bill Dees
Released by Roy Orbison as a single


“Pretty Woman” is one of Roy Orbison’s few true, flat out rockers. “Only The Lonely,” “Blue Bayou” and “Crying” are classics of both the general Pop category and/or Country. As deliciously beautiful, haunting and aching as they are, those mid- and slow-tempo numbers plainly don’t rock.

“Pretty Woman” starts with a bang and ends on another bang. It is constructed with the skill of a Roman aqueduct’s architect, tunneling, soaring across ravines and delivering the goods at every chance – since 1964.

A lone snare drum beats, a bass-heavy guitar hops on board and the double-tracked vocals of Roy Orbison kick in confidently, a man at the top of his game completely at ease with his material. “Pretty Woman” was recorded in Nashville before it became Tennessee’s version of Vegas, plasticized and distorted beyond human recognition. This was the Nashville of Hank, Johnny, Chet, Patsy, Tammy, Conway, Loretta, Dolly, Merle, Waylon and Willie. It was the Nashville that Dylan would sneak off to in 1968. It was the real thing.

The power beat established in the opening of “Pretty Woman” continues in practically every bar of the song, building in some spots, laying back like a tomcat waiting for its moment in others. A lightly tinkling piano skips in and out of the mix, sweet and alluring as the woman walking down the street. The masculine guitar licks are made up of no-nonsense notes and a raw outlaw sound. Orbison’s steady-Freddy acoustic strumming holds the arrangement together. In all there are four guitars playing on the original tape although only three were left intact on the final cut.

Lead guitarist Billy Sanford was 24 at the time of the recording and had been commuting between Nashville and Shreveport, Louisiana, where he played weekly on Louisiana Hayride, a TV show that helped to launch Elvis Presley’s career. He was considered “a kid” even though Orbison and his back up crew, later to be known as the Candy Men, were scarcely a few years older. Sanford laid down his licks for “Pretty Woman” all right and went on to do session work with some of the finest pre-synthetic Nashville smash hits for the likes of Charlie Rich, Kenny Rogers, Waylon Jennings, Tanya Tucker and Elvis.

The leads and fills he tosses into “Pretty Woman” are among the most recognizable in pop history.

The structural concept of the song is to begin in one octave, rise and then rise again before falling off into a musical change that releases some of the bottled up sexual energy. The device takes full advantage of Orbison’s enormous vocal range – three full octaves. His voice swoops and soars like a swallow in spring. An absolutely spellbinding performance.

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Above and beyond, Roy set in reinforced concrete two classic hook-like “moves” vocally. He gives the best male wildcat growl ever recorded, and he garners the award for greatest use of the word “mercy” by a white male in a lead role. Truth be told, he had no competition for either contest. Both are simply brilliant, mixing a little light-hearted sex with that old-time religion.

U2 lead singer Bono declared Orbison to be the greatest singer of all time, the one with the most distinctive voice. In his obituary in Newsweek, David Gates said that (along with Elvis Presley), “Orbison had elevated a form of regional music into something approaching art song.” In his History of Sun Records, Colin Escott tries to grasp the “timlessness and placelessness” of Roy Orbison’s work.

Without a doubt, Roy’s three-minute dramas can’t be placed in time or geography. He is clearly from somewhere in the south of Baltimore and he is pre-Beatles. Otherwise, his music feels the same way that music by The Band feels, or the way the songs in the enormous catalog of Neil Young feel. Orbison comes across as familiar and exotic at the same time like an uncle who sailed the South Seas with the merchant marine.

Here’s Roy playing the song.

Orbison’s falsetto, strange even in the all-too-brief era of his prime when male falsetto singing was commonplace, is at once compelling and repulsive. It is a true inner voice, one that the singer uses as an alter ego, a self talking to the self. The listener overhears some very private conversations and it can be unsettling. This is apparent in “Pretty Woman,” which begins:

Pretty woman, walking down the street
Pretty woman, the kind I like to meet
Pretty woman, I can’t believe you
You’re not the truth
No one could look as good as you.
Mercy.

It takes a verse to comprehend that he is not singing to the woman in the song, but thinking these things in his head – he is singing to himself.

Pretty woman, won’t you pardon me
Pretty woman, I couldn’t help but see
Pretty woman
That you look lovely as can be
Are you lonely just like me
Grrrrowll

Here a little flamenco enters in a change that alters the song completely. The tempo changes and we are whisked away to what amounts to another song entirely even as the lyrical punch-line stays the same. A very sharp flourish indeed.

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Pretty woman, stop a while
Pretty woman, talk a while
Pretty woman, give your smile to me
Pretty woman, yeah yeah yeah
Pretty woman, look my way
Pretty woman, say you’ll stay with me

New York Times writer Peter Watrous declared once when reviewing an Orbison concert: “He has perfected an odd vision of popular music, one in which eccentricity and imagination beat back all the pressures toward conformity.”

The singing has turned animalistic, the high tenor in Orbison’s vocal chords dancing in like a toreador. Some refer to Orbison as the “Caruso of Rock,” which may be stretching a point but nevertheless there are overtones of opera in his delivery.

‘Cause I need you, I’ll treat you right
Come with me baby, be mine tonight

The interlude ends with a rising vocal execution that dwells on the second syllable of “tonight,” the voice shifting up and up on three different notes spanning an octave. The vocal twist is mightily sublime, among some of the best Rock-N-Roll singing ever recorded.

“Pretty Woman” downshifts as smoothly and effortlessly back to the main musical and lyrical themes of the song.

First the pretty woman walks on by and the singer is crestfallen, but then…

What do I see
Is she walking back to me
Yeah, she’s walking back to me

The internal monologue is complete. The song is sent to bed and put to sleep as abruptly as it begins, on the words ‘Ooooh Oh pretty woman,” which echo with ringing reverb.

Orbison received only a small serving of the recognition he deserved in life. Since his death in 1988, he has become a superstar. “Pretty Woman” is a song far beyond the normal bounds of Rock-N-Roll, blending as it does four or five genres without shedding a bead of sweat. Mystifyingly, many “writers and critics who prophesy with [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][their] pen” – as Dylan wrote, relegate Orbison to the back of the Rock-N-Roll bus.

Yet in his heyday he toured with The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Patsy Cline. When he opened for the rising-star Beatles in Britain in 1963, although Roy owned the top of the bill, he went on stage first where on one night he did fourteen encores. Later, he would hook up again with George Harrison, as well as with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty to form The Traveling Wilburys. He was best of friends with Elvis. Bruce Springsteen inducted him into The Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, the year before Orbison’s death.

Fourteen encores? Mercy.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

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