"Prett
y Woman" is a song, released in August 1964, which was a worldwide success for Roy Orbison. Recorded on the Monument Records label in Nashville, Tennessee, it was written by Roy Orbison and Bill Dees. The song spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. "Pretty Woman" was also Orbison's third single to top the British singles chart (for a total of three weeks).The previous Orbison singles to reach No.1 in the UK were "Only the Lonely" in 1960 and "It's Over" earlier in 1964. There were three guitar players on the session, Billy Sanford, Jerry Kennedy and Wayne Moss. Billy Sanford, who later played session for everybody from Elvis to Don Williams (and took to the road with Don in the 1990s) did the kick-off. Williams introduced him as a kid who had just arrived Nashville, with a borrowed guitar, who heard Orbison was minus a guitar player, who went over and got the gig.
Although the official recording appeared in August 1964, the Beatles recalled Orbison having written and performed the song during a mid-1963 tour of the UK on which both acts performed.
Five years after its release, in 1969, the single was awarded gold record by RIAA.
Orbison posthumously won the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for his live recording of the song on his HBO television special Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night.
In 1999, the song was honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and was named one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it #222 on their list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time." (Info Wiki)
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