shown back row (l-r): Derek Spencer; BMI songwriter Bob Sima; songwriter Victoria Vox; SAW and BMI Consultant Rob Goad; BMI songwriter Susan Souza; and BMI’s Fred Cannon. Front row (l-r): Kathy Bennett; Jacques Initiative’s Jeff Weaver; two patients of the Jacques Initiative; and SAW’s President Jean Bayou

"I am delighted that through Broadcast Music, Inc. [BMI], I was able to bring together the local songwriter members of the Baltimore Songwriters Association and the Songwriters Association of Washington to participate in educating the Baltimore community about the Jacques Initiative through Courtyard Concerts,” said Cannon.

Cannon continued, “The response to my call to the songwriting community to support the Jaques Initiative has been amazing. Many of the area's best songwriters have volunteered their time to promote this wonderful initiative, which gives hope of a normal life for those infected with AIDs. It is imperative that we educate the local community about this important program.

“BMI and the songwriting organizations will continue to promote the Institute of Human Virology's Jaques Initiative with planned concerts in the spring. It is an honor for all of us to be part of this project and we thank all the folks at the University of Maryland- Baltimore and the Institute of Human Virology for their support and vision to educate the community through talented songwriters, said Cannon."

In 2002, IHV was awarded $400,000 from The Abell Foundation to kick off the Jacques Initiative national pilot program. Today, with additional funding from the Maryland AIDS Administration, the Jacques Initiative is open to all HIV patients who are newly diagnosed and just beginning treatment, built around the philosophy that it's difficult for anyone to remember to take any medication 95% of the time. As such, the program pairs HIV-positive patients (approximately 400) with healthcare providers in the clinic or with family, friends or other HIV patients who've been successful at managing a rigorous treatment plan.

“I am very grateful to Fred Cannon and the artists who participated in the Courtyard Concert Series,” said Derek E. Spencer MS CRNP, Executive Director of the Jacques Initiative. “The epidemic of HIV in our community is great and it will take an equally great and concerted effort to control the spread of HIV in our communities. Having IHV Board of Advisor member Fred Cannon’s support was a great way to partner around this issue. We look forward to future projects.”

 The songs in question appear on the running order with additional information in brackets after the titles, alerting the listener to the fact they feature on movie soundtracks – movies made by David Lynch, Nicolas Roeg and Wim Wenders, three of the most visually stylistic directors of all time. These men are nothing less than artists, celluloid the canvas for their often outlandish and provocative imagery, and for whom The Big O could effortlessly provide the necessarily dramatic aural accompaniment.

It was always that way, you could argue. Even fumbling adolescent urgency like Roy’s early single Almost 18 is cinematic, a two-and-a-half minute précis of countless high school coming-of-age comedies; Uptown could be read as an aspirational story of wrong-side-of-the-tracks betterment; Blue Bayou as a tail-between-the-legs return to humble home roots; Running Scared the positive denouement of a fraught love triangle tragedy; It’s Over a lachrymose credit-roll to a story of romantic defeat. Any screenwriter who can’t put together a script based on the lyrics to a Roy Orbison song ought to be back waiting on tables.

Sam Phillips famously fell out with Orbison because he didn’t know what to do with him; he wasn’t as malleable as Elvis, Jerry Lee or the rest of the Sun Records stable, and it took a car ride across state from Memphis to Nashville before Roy found the platform for his singular pain at Monument Records. Here was where the legend took shape, where an awkward, chubby and weak-sighted misfit articulated the doubts and insecurities of the vast majority of normal folk who, in common with the singer, weren’t as pretty as Elvis or as aggressive or as confident as Jerry Lee.

It’s interesting to hear those early Sun sides on the first disc of this collection, partly because it’s the sound of a man struggling to find his place in the world. At Monument, on superb records like Only The Lonely, Crying and Pretty Paper, he arrived where he belonged, but it was still a world of obstacles and uncertainties. The swagger and bravado of Oh Pretty Woman aside, Orbison was the ultimate chronicler of inescapable emotional doom.

There was a period, stretching over the best part of two decades, where Roy was in the wilderness, condemned to poorly-staged nostalgia shows and low-rent supper clubs, but the essence of his music could still be heard in Bruce Springsteen (Born To Run), Elvis Costello (Alison) or Tom Waits (Blue Valentines). Interestingly, all three were on board when Orbison returned to prominence via a 1988 TV special, in tandem with the tremendous Mystery Girl album – U2, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne also contributing to the rehabilitation.

Dylan and George Harrison upped the ante with The Travelling Wilburys project, again represented here, but it wasn’t so much a helping hand as an acknowledgement of the irrefutable genius in their midst. Roy Orbison was – is - a god, and The Soul Of Rock ‘n’ Roll might well be the nearest pop music ever gets to producing a Bible.

 A version of this review appears in a forthcoming issue of the UK music magazine Record Collector