This was recorded from a fairly good US copy of the single at 96kHz, 24-bit.
The mono mix of "Oh, Pretty Woman" seems to be relatively rare on CD: it appears on Bear Family's seven-disc "Orbison" set from 2001 as well as the 1999 compilation "16 Biggest Hits".
Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" is inarguably his greatest hit: it reached number one around the world, and became his second number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (for three weeks starting on September 26, 1964 -- the first was "Running Scared" which held that position for one week in 1961). The song was inspired when Orbison's first wife Claudette told him and co-author Bill Dees that she was going out to shop; Orbison asked if she needed any money, but Dees replied that "a pretty woman never needs any money." This was the second song she inspired; the first being "Claudette", written by Orbison and was a minor hit for the Everly Brothers in 1958.
The song was recorded on August 1, 1964 at RCA Studio B in Nashville with
the following personnel:
* Roy Orbison - vocals
* Jerry Kennedy, Wayne Moss, Billy Sanford - guitars
* Floyd Cramer - piano
* Henry Strzelecki - bass
* Buddy Harman, Paul Garrison - drums
It's notable for being the only one of Orbison's songs while at Monument Records to have a dedicated monaural mix; all of his Monument tracks were mixed on-the-fly to stereo twintrack tape while simultaneously being recorded to three-track tape as a safety master. The monaural singles and albums were merely "fold-downs" (an average of the left and right channels) of the twintrack stereo mixes to mono, except for "Oh, Pretty Woman". Someone realized that the lyric "come with me, baby" in that song (at 1m41s) might be too suggestive for radio airplay, so they changed it to "come to me, baby" (this adds to the already overwhelming evidence that radio and TV censors have dirty minds). Rather than re-record the whole song, it was "bounced" from the three-track master to a new twintrack tape, mixing the two tracks of music (that appear in the left and right of the stereo mix) to one track and copying Orbison's vocal to the other. This was then copied directly to two tracks of a three-track tape, leaving one track free to record the changed line. This new recording was then mixed directly to mono by combining all three tracks, muting the original vocal for the duration of the changed lyric. This makes it a fourth-generation recording (the first being the original three-track tape, the second the twintrack bounce, the third the copy back to three- track with the additional vocal and the fourth the mono mixdown) -- other Monument singles would be second-generation (the twintrack or three-track tape and the mono fold-down). Despite this, the sound quality is surprisingly good.
In addition to the 45rpm single, this song appeared on the 1965 LP "Orbisongs", Orbison's last album of new recordings for Monument. This album also contains the single's B-side, "Yo Te Amo Maria", also written by Orbison and Dees. Unlike the A-side, the mono mix of this song is a fold-down of the stereo mix. It was recorded at the same session with the following personnel:
* Roy Orbison - vocals
* Wayne Moss, Billy Sanford - guitars
* Bob Moore - bass
* Buddy Harman, Jerry Arnold, Paul Garrison - drums
* Boots Randolph - saxophone
* Bill Dees - harmony vocals
-- Doctor Bob, July 2009