Roy Orbison

Orbison’s direct paternal ancestor was traced to Thomas Orbison (b.1715) from Lurgan, Northern Ireland who settled in the Province of Pennsylvania in the middle of the century.

He was the second of three sons born to Orbie Lee Orbison (1913–1984) and Nadine Vesta Shults (1914–1992).

Roy Kelton Orbison (April 23, 1936 – December 6, 1988) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician known for his impassioned singing style, complex song structures, and dark, emotional ballads.

Orbison was born on April 23, 1936, in Vernon, Texas.

He began singing on a local radio show at age 8, and he became the show's host by the late 1940s.

At the age of 9, Orbison won a contest on radio station KVWC, which led to his own radio show where he sang the same songs every week.

According to The Authorized Roy Orbison, a biography written by Roy's son Alex, the family moved to Fort Worth in 1942 to find work in the aircraft factories.

He attended Denver Avenue Elementary School there until a polio scare prompted the family to return to Vernon.

Orbison's father gave him a guitar on his sixth birthday, and Roy was taught how to play it by his father and older brother.

Roy recalled, "I was finished, you know, for anything else" by the time he was 7, and music became the focus of his life.

His major musical influence as a youth was country music.

He was particularly moved by Lefty Frizzell's singing, with its slurred syllables, leading Orbison to adopt the stage name "Lefty Wilbury" during his time with the Traveling Wilburys.

He also enjoyed Hank Williams, Moon Mullican and Jimmie Rodgers.

One of the first musicians that he heard in person was Ernest Tubb, playing on the back of a truck in Fort Worth.

In West Texas, he was exposed to rhythm and blues, Tex-Mex, the orchestral arrangements of Mantovani, and Cajun music.

The cajun favorite "Jole Blon" was one of the first songs that he sang in public.

According to The Authorized Roy Orbison, the family moved again in 1946, to Wink, Texas.

Orbison described life in Wink as "football, oil fields, oil, grease, and sand" and expressed relief that he was able to leave the desolate town.

All the Orbison children had poor eyesight; Roy used thick corrective lenses from an early age.

He was self-conscious about his appearance and began dyeing his nearly-white hair black when he was still young.

He was quiet, self-effacing, and remarkably polite and obliging.

He was always keen to sing, however, and considered his voice memorable, but not great.

In 1949, at the ago of 13, Orbison and some friends formed the band Wink Westerners.

He was signed by Sam Phillips of Sun Records in 1956, but enjoyed his greatest success with Monument Records.

Orbison's music is mostly in the rock genre and his most successful periods were in the early 1960s and the late 1980s.

His music was described by critics as operatic, earning him the nicknames "The Caruso of Rock" and "The Big O".

Many of Orbison's songs conveyed vulnerability at a time when most male rock-and-roll performers projected machismo.

He performed with minimal motion and in black clothes, matching his dyed black hair and dark sunglasses.

Born in Texas, Orbison began singing in a rockabilly and country-and-western band as a teenager.

From 1960 to 1966, 22 of Orbison's singles reached the Billboard Top 40.

He wrote or co-wrote almost all of his own Top 10 hits, including "Only the Lonely" (1960), "Running Scared" (1961), "Crying" (1961), "In Dreams" (1963), and "Oh, Pretty Woman" (1964).

After the mid-1960s Orbison suffered a number of personal tragedies, and his career faltered.

He experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s, following the success of several cover versions of his songs.

Orbison's honors include inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989, and the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2014.

He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and five other Grammy Awards.

Rolling Stone placed him at number 37 on its list of the "Greatest Artists of All Time" and number 13 on its list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time".

In 1988, he co-founded the Traveling Wilburys supergroup with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne.

Orbison died of a heart attack that December at age 52.

One month later, his song "You Got It" (1989) was released as a solo single, becoming his first hit to reach both the US and UK Top 10 in nearly 25 years.

In 2002, Billboard magazine listed him at number 74 on its list of the Top 600 recording artists.