1977Released
3:59

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Blue Bayou. By Songfacts®.

"Blue Bayou" was originally recorded by Roy Orbison on his legendary 1963 album In Dreams. While it only scored as high as #29 in the US (despite scoring #1 in Ireland and #10 in Norway), Linda Ronstadt took it to far greater fame as her only gold-selling single and her signature song. Linda Ronstadt has been called "the most successful and certainly the most durable and most gifted woman rock singer of her era" in Andrew Greeley's book God in Popular Culture.

Orbison wrote a lot of songs with themes of loneliness and yearning, but in many cases there was a lot more to them. In an interview with the British paper NME, he said: "Take a song like 'Blue Bayou' for instance, that's simply a song about being on the road. And that is really a happy song. It probably sounds very strange to you for me to say that. The fellow's bound and determined to get back to where you sleep all day and the catfish play and the sailing boats and the girls and all that stuff. It's a beautiful thought. Now granted that it is a sad song, a lonely song, but it's a loneliness that precedes happiness. And I'm not sitting here trying to tell you that I don't sing lonely songs or anything like that."

Roy Orbison wrote this song with Joe Melson. The pair collaborated on many of Orbison's classics, including "Only The Lonely" and "Crying."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Blue Bayou.
BKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
95BPM

Album

The album Blue Bayou is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Blue Bayou.
Rhino/Elektra
© 2006 Rhino Entertaiment Company, a Warner Music Group company
℗ 2006 Rhino Entertaiment Company, a Warner Music Group company

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