On This Day: Roy Orbison Released His Rendition of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”
Much like his albums, Orbison’s set featured a few covers peppered in, Elvis Presley‘s “Mean Woman Blues,” which he originally released as a B-Side to “Blue Bayou” in 1963, Simon & Garfunkel‘s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and the Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn-penned “The Morning After,” which was featured in the film The Poseidon Adventure and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Another cover on Milestones was a song that had come out three years earlier, Neil Diamond‘s anthemic hit “Sweet Caroline.”
Orbison’s sentimental cover of the song was a crowd-pleaser and a surprising addition that eventually made its way onto his 1973 album Milestones. Released September 24, 1973, Milestones features an original by Orbison, “Blue Rain (Coming Down),” which he co-wrote with Joe Melson—also his co-writer on “Only the Lonely” and “Crying”—and “The World You Live In,” penned solely by Melson for Orbison.
The album also features a cover of the Bee Gees‘ “Words” and Diamond’s classic, which became a baseball stadium anthem for the Boston Red Sox and told the story of a girl named Caroline.
Though speculation was that Diamond was singing about Caroline Kennedy, he initially said she had nothing to do with the inspiration behind the track. However, the real meaning behind the song was inspired by an innocent, “sweet” photograph Diamond saw of the then-president’s daughter as a child.
After Diamond’s 2007 performance of the song at Kennedy’s 50th birthday party, he revealed that the song was about the early photograph he saw of her in a magazine when he was a “young, broke songwriter” in the ’60s. “I’ve never discussed it with anybody before, intentionally,” revealed Diamond. “I thought maybe I would tell it to Caroline [Kennedy] when I met her someday. I’m happy to have gotten it off my chest and to have expressed it to Caroline.”
While he was holed up in a Memphis hotel room, Diamond wrote all the lyrics to “Sweet Caroline” in less than an hour. “It was a No. 1 record and probably is the biggest, most important song of my career,” added Diamond, “and I have to thank her [Kennedy] for the inspiration.”
Released in May 1969, “Sweet Caroline” remained on the charts for 14 weeks and peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Though many people have covered the Diamond classic—Presley, Bob Dylan, Andy Williams, and more—Orbison’s rendition delivered a different yearning and a sweetly innocent love for a girl named “Caroline.”
In 1987, Orbison was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, a year before he died of a heart attack on December 6, 1988, at age 52.
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