1 November 1963
Another slightly unsettling image (above) of clear-glasses-era Big O, as if he were a mere mortal and not the Platonic ideal of barely-holding-it-together heartache made song. Also unsettling to me: I understand a bayou to be some sort of marshy, semi-stagnant American lake. Leaving someone behind there sounds more like a mob hit or dead pet disposal.
That said, every bayou is a blue bayou when Roy Orbison is singing about it. “I feel so bad I got a worried mind / I’m so lonesome all the time” is his opening gambit here and things don’t pick up much for him after that. “Maybe I’ll feel better again / on Blue Bayou” he ventures, when we all know there’s two chances of that. But then, we’re not here to hear Roy sound happy – not when that voice is a pure instrument of electrifying sadness to jump-start this otherwise breezy pastoral ditty into yet another intriguing Orbison tale of woe. Sorry Roy, but everyone loves a broken heart.
