Teen Beat / Teen Rock
Years active 1959-2014 ?
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Bonham, Texas, USA
Born May 1935 (age 83 [2018])
Joe Melson (born May 1935) is an American singer and a BMI Award-winning songwriter.
Life and career
Melson was born in Bonham, Fannin County, Texas. He was reared on a farm until he was sixteen. He attended high school in Gore, Oklahoma, and in Chicago, Illinois, before he returned to Texas to study at the two-year Odessa College in Odessa, the seat of Ector County. He studied and played music as a teenager and fronted a rockabilly band called the Cavaliers.
Beginning in 1959,[1] first at his home in Midland, Texas, and then in Nashville, Tennessee, Melson teamed up with a Roy Orbison who had just joined Monument Records,[1] with whom he would soon write a string of hits. Before their collaboration, Orbison had been solely a rockabilly performer. Although Melson himself was rooted in that music genre, he had begun writing rhythm and blues songs. Melson recognized the potential in Orbison's voice, encouraging the singer to explore its power through their first collaboration, "Only the Lonely." What resulted on March 25, 1960, was the first operatic rock ballad in the history of popular music. The song went to No. 2 on the BillboardHot 100 chart in the United States and to #1 in the UK Singles Chart, which launched Orbison to international musical stardom. Not only did that song influence Orbison to write such operatic ballads as "In Dreams," but a few months later it also induced Orbison's friend Elvis Presley to record "It's Now or Never," based on the Neapolitan art song "'O Sole Mio."
Melson and Orbison followed up with similar sounds such as the dramatic "Running Scared" that went to #1 in the US. The result of their collaborative efforts produced such songs as: …Read the original text here >>> Joe Melson
Joe Melson ”A Milestone in Rock’n Roll” Bear Family BFX 15027 [1979]