Roy Orbison Biography, Photos and Posters

Roy Orbison

Biography

Born: April 23, 1936
City and Country of Origin: Vernon, Texas
Music Background:
Awards: Grammy 1990 Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, "Oh Pretty Woman;" 1989 Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal, "Traveling Wilburys Volume One;" 1988 Best Country Vocal Collaboration, "Crying;" 1986 Best Spoken Word Or Non-Musical Recording, Interviews From The Class Of '55 Recording Sessions; 1980 Best Country Performance Duo Or Group, "That Lovin' You Feelin' Again"
Top Recordings: "Only The Lonely," Blue Angel," "Running Scared," "Candy Man," "Crying," "In Dreams," "It's Over," "Blue Bayou," "Oh, Pretty Woman"
Roy Orbison Biography: For 4 decades starting in the late 50s Orbison was one of America's greatest singer/songwriters. Dressed in his traditional dark clothes to go with his jet black hair and dark glasses, worn to conceal their thickness due to severe astigmatism, Roy would sing in his distinctive high pitch voice often breaking into falsetto.

Roy was the second son of Nadine and Orbie Lee who lived in north Texas. After 1943, the family moved first to Fort Worth and then to the oil town of Wink in Winkler County near the New Mexico border. Music was an important part of family life and by the the age of 13 Roy organized his first band, The Wink Westerners. Orbison was graduated from Wink High School in 1954. He went on to North Texas State College in Denton, Texas for a year, and enrolled at Odessa Junior College in Odessa to study history and English. Meanwhile the The Wink Westerners had some success having their own 30 minute weekly shows on KMID and then KOSA. One guest on their show was Johnny Cash who advised them to seek a recording contract with his record producer, Sam Phillips, of Sun Records.

After first turning the group down Phillips reconsidered and changed the name of the group to "The Teen Kings." Orbison left school in 1956 and moved to Memphis. TN. He had little success with the rockabilly sound. After a short stint at Sun with his recording "Ooby Dooby," and the Everly Brothers recording of his composition "Claudette" as the B side of their Number 1 hit "All I Have To Do Is Dream," Orbison's music career seemed to be over. So, he left Memphis and settled in Nashville, TN where he secured work at Acuff-Rose Music as a song writer eventually landing a contract with RCA Records. When his contract expired Chet Atkins referred him to Fred Foster the owner of Monument Records in 1959.

In 1957 Orbison teamed up with songwriter Joe Melson who had written "Raindrops," a song which featured melodic twists and lyrical stylings he found appealing. The two teamed up to create a sound unheard of in rock and roll at the time: the dramatic rock ballad. Together they created many hist for Monument. Roy's first record, "Uptown," was moderately successful, but his follow up proved to be his first smash hit "Only The Lonely," which climbed to #2 on the U.S. charts and #1 in the U.K. Their next effort "Running Scared" became a US #1.

In 1963, he headlined a European tour with The Beatles which led to a lifelong friendship. Roy would be one of only a handful of American acts to survive the British invasion. In 1964 he toured with The Beach Boys and in 1965 with The Rolling Stones. In 1965 after signing a contract with MGM Records he made a movie for MGM Studios The Fastest Guitar Alive, in which he performed several songs form the album of the same name. Although he remained popular elsewhere, due to changing tastes in music he had no hits in America after 1967. His popularity would not recover in the States until the 1980s.
Died: December 6, 1988

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