Joe Melson, a musician and songwriter whose close collaboration with the singer Roy Orbison in the late 1950s and early ’60s produced a long list of sweeping, operatic rock ballads that established Mr. Orbison as an international star, including the hits “Only the Lonely,” “Crying” and “Running Scared,” died on July 1 at his home in Nashville. He was 91.
His son-in-law and manager, Dwayne Byerly, confirmed the death.
Until Mr. Melson and Mr. Orbison began working together in 1959, American rock music was more often than not defined by hard-driving beats and emotionally direct lyrics.
Mr. Orbison’s earliest songs, like “Ooby Dooby” (1956), followed that template. Though the song made the Billboard Top 100 chart, he struggled to produce another hit that would distinguish him from the crowd.
At the time, both men were living around Odessa, an oil town in West Texas; they both played in rockabilly bands and knew each other through the local music scene.
One day, Mr. Melson noticed Mr. Orbison sitting in his car, working through a melody on his guitar. He tapped on the glass and they struck up a conversation. Soon they were writing together.
Though they agreed from the beginning that Mr. Orbison would do most of the singing, their collaboration was closer than that of many writing pairs. Mr. Melson saw something in Mr. Orbison that the singer didn’t: a voice that could not only span three octaves, but could also do so with a supple blues inflection that added dramatic flair.
The lyrics they wrote together were equally dramatic — laden with melancholy, jealousy, even fear, and setting a tone that would later pair naturally with Mr. Orbison’s signature black-dyed hair and wraparound sunglasses.
After scoring a minor hit with their song “Uptown” in 1959, they struck gold the next year with the Latin-inflected “Only the Lonely,” which reached No. 2 in the United States and No. 1 in Britain. As with many of their songs, Mr. Melson sang backup. (That’s him singing the catchy “dum-dum, dumby doo wum.”)
“Only the Lonely” may have narrowly missed the No. 1 spot in the U.S., but it became an anthem for lovelorn romantics worldwide. Among its many fans was Elvis Presley, who bought cartons of the single to give to friends around Memphis.
Not long after, Mr. Melson’s second child, his daughter Michelle, was born. Racing home from the hospital, he was pulled over by a police officer for speeding. Reeling from the emotions of the moment, he wrote the song “Blue Angel” over the rest of the ride home.
Soon after, Mr. Orbison moved to Nashville and asked Mr. Melson to join him there. Mr. Melson immediately quit his job as a clerk for Standard Oil, packed his family into his Oldsmobile and headed east.
“Blue Angel” reached No. 9 in 1960. It was followed by their first No. 1 hit, “Running Scared,” in 1961, and “Crying,” which reached No. 2 the same year.
Along with Ray Rush, the pair also wrote an early version of another signature Orbison song, “Pretty Woman” — though it was a later version, which Mr. Orbison wrote with Bill Dees in 1964 and titled “Oh, Pretty Woman,” that became a hit.
Mr. Melson and Mr. Orbison drifted apart after 1963, but they reunited in the early 1970s to produce several more songs, including “The World You Live In,” which Mr. Melson wrote with his wife, Susie.
In all, Mr. Melson and Mr. Orbison’s collaboration led to more than 200 songs, and the distinctive sound they developed influenced decades of musicians, including Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney, as well as the rockabilly revival of the 1980s and ’90s.
Claudie Joe Melson was born on May 11, 1935, in Bonham, a small city in northeast Texas. His father, Clarence, was a sharecropper, and as a teenager, Joe worked alongside him in the fields. His mother, Bernice (Burk) Melson, managed the home.
After high school, Mr. Melson moved to Odessa, where he worked in the mailroom at Standard Oil and took night classes in accounting at Odessa Junior College (now Odessa College).
His first two marriages, to Susie Mills and Dagmar Frazier, ended in divorce. He married his longtime fiancée, Julie Tan, in 2025.
She survives him, along with two children from his first marriage, Michael Melson and Michelle Byerly; two daughters from his second marriage, Melodie Garner and Serena Aaker; two grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and a sister, Katie Bethel.
Mr. Melson wrote for several other musicians, including the country singers Dan Folger, Don Gibson and Glenn Barber, and recorded several songs on his own. He was inaugurated into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018.
Most recently, he collaborated extensively with the Irish-Australian musician Damien Leith, including on the single “Heart Love,” released in February.
But nothing eclipsed his work with Mr. Orbison.
“People get release through these big, driving, stair-step songs,” Mr. Melson told the writer Ellis Amburn for his book “Dark Star: The Roy Orbison Story” (1990). “They love it because they have expressed through Roy what they’ve been wanting to cry out.”
