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ORBISON, ROY KELTON (1936-1988). Roy Orbison, rock 'n' roll singer and songwriter, was born to Orbie Lee and Nadine Orbison on April, 23, 1936, in Vernon, Texas. He grew up in Wink, a small West Texas oil town, where his father taught him to play the guitar at age six. Orbison dedicated himself to music as a young man, performing at school and on the radio. While attending Wink High School he formed a country music group called the Wink Westerners, which featured Orbison as lead singer and guitar player. Only later, while attending North Texas State College, where he met fellow student and musician Pat Boone, did he transform the Wink Westerners into his first rock 'n' roll band, the Teen Kings. After two years of college he dropped out. The group played throughout West Texas and on a number of television shows and recorded "Ooby Dooby," which brought him to the attention of the Sun record label in Memphis. Orbison rerecorded "Ooby Dooby" for Sun, and in 1956 it became his first chart hit. It was made in the pioneering rock 'n' roll style known as rockabilly-a frantic mixture of country music and rhythm and blues developed by Elvis Presley and Sun label owner Sam Phillips. Unlike Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, up-and-coming music stars who were also recording rockabilly on the Sun label, Orbison had little chart success. The Teen Kings dissolved, and Orbison left Sun. Most of Orbison's early success was as a songwriter. "Claudette," a song written by Orbison and named after his first wife, was a hit in 1958 for the country/rockabilly duo the Everly Brothers. In 1959 Orbison joined the small Monument label in Nashville, which resulted in a string of international hit records from 1960 to 1966, including such classic rock 'n' roll melodramas as "Only the Lonely" (1960), "Blue Angel" (1960), "Running Scared" (1961), "Blue Bayou" (1963), "It's Over" (1964), and "Oh, Pretty Woman" (1964). Always noted for his remarkable, operatic voice-Elvis Presley once referred to him as "the greatest singer in the world"-Orbison's hits in this period featured his trademark three-octave voice with its soaring, emotional splendor, his lush songwriting with its beautiful melodies, sophisticated studio production, and dark, brooding themes of love, loss, and longing. Wearing his trademark black clothes, slicked back hair, and dark glasses, the short, pale, shy performer with the overpowering voice played his hits around the world. In England in 1963 he headlined a tour that included the Beatles, then on the verge of international popularity. Orbison's time at the top was brief. His wife Claudette was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1966 and in 1968 two of his three sons were killed in a fire at his Nashville home. He married his second wife Barbara in 1969, and they had two more sons. Orbison underwent open heart surgery in 1979. This period of personal difficulty also saw his hit recordings dwindle although he continued to tour. In the late 1970s and 1980s he experienced a revival of popularity when artists such as Linda Ronstadt and Van Halen recorded some of his songs, and he released new recordings of his classic hits. His 1980 recording of "That Loving You Feeling Again" with Emmylou Harris won a Grammy Award, and in 1987 his recording "In Dreams" was featured in the soundtrack of Blue Velvet, a popular movie. That same year he was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame with a poignant introduction from Bruce Springsteen whose monumental hit album of 1975 Born To Run paid lyrical and stylistic homage to Orbison. In 1988, the year of his death, Orbison's renewed popularity was confirmed in a critically acclaimed television special featuring his music performed by him and his musical heirs. He also released an album in 1988, The Traveling Wilburys, Volume One, featuring Orbison and his friends Bob Dylan, George Harrison of the Beatles, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra, which was in the top ten at the time of his death. He died of a heart attack, the night of December 6, 1988, at his mother's home in Hendersonville, Tennessee. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ellis Amburn, Dark Star: The Roy Orbison Story (New York: Carol, 1990). Alan Clayson, Only the Lonely: Roy Orbison's Life and Legacy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989). Jim Miller, ed., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, rev. and updated ed. (New York: Random House/Rolling Stone Press, 1980). New York Times, December 8, 1988.
George B. Ward
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