Orbison, Roy (1936-1988)

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Orbison, Roy (1936-1988)

Introduced by Elvis Presley in 1976 as "quite simply, the greatest singer in the world," Roy Orbison—with his lush, dramatic orchestral songs and near-operatic voice—helped expand the sonic and emotional limitations of pop music. His most influential material came from his work during the early to mid-1960s, and his songs "Only the Lonely," "Running Scared," "It's Over," "Down the Line," "Cryin'," and "In Dreams," among others would support his career for decades. Although Orbison's stage show would remain essentially the same from the mid-1960s until his death in 1988, he insisted that he didn't tire of repeatedly singing the same songs. "Gracious, no, because I've worked a lifetime to do a show of just my own material," Orbison told Radio Two, according to Alan Clayson in his biography Only the Lonely. Orbison credited the lasting impact of his music to a certain innocence in his songs. He noted in The Face that "God has a way of giving you the lyric and the melody and, if it stands up over the years, that adolescence, that innocence helps to keep its intentions pure. That innocence is the big ingredient that keeps my songs alive, that makes them stand tall," according to Clayson.

Born in Wink, Texas, to a musical family (his father played Jimmie Rodgers songs and his uncle was a blues artist), Orbison made his performing debut at age eight, and was soon regularly playing on local radio stations. In high school he formed the Wink Westerners, which played mostly western swing music, and when Orbison went off to college at North Texas State College, he rechristened the group the Teen Kings. While in college, the group recorded a raucous rockabilly tune called "Ooby Dooby," which eventually caught the attention of Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, who rereleased it to become a mild hit in 1956. On the heels of his first hit, Orbison cut a number of sides for Sun during the mid-to-late 1950s, and although his career as a minor rockabilly star was booming, he grew increasingly tired of this music and the energetic stage presence it required.

By the late 1950s, Orbison had severed his ties with Phillips and Sun, and moved to Nashville to write songs for the country music publishing powerhouse Acuff-Rose. The ballad "Claudette," written about his wife, became a hit for the Everly Brothers. Interested in returning to his own singing career, Orbison—with the help of Wesley Rose—signed with Fred Foster at the newly opened Monument in 1959 and the following year released "Uptown," which rose high enough on Billboard's pop chart to suggest that Orbison could maintain a career as a singer.

By 1960, with the release of "Only the Lonely," Orbison had embraced what would become his unique presence in pop music. With this song, Orbison exercised his vocal range and introduced audiences to the power of his voice, which Clayson noted that media enthusiasm would stretch to "an impossible six octaves." Duane Eddy commented, according to Clayson, that "when you thought he'd sung as high as he possibly could, he would effortlessly go higher and finish up with a big finish and it was wonderful." "Only the Lonely" soon hit number two in the Hot 100 in the United States and topped the charts in both Australia and Great Britain.

Although Orbison had already been dying his hair black for years, he soon incorporated what would become his trademark black attire and sunglasses into his stage act. Orbison dropped his hip-shaking stage acrobatics in favor of a much more emotionally composed vocal style and austere stage presence. Deciding to let his voice stand on its own, Orbison would remain almost motionless on stage.

Orbison's voice opened pop music to manly emotions. About his song "Cryin'," Orbison told New Musical Express that "I wanted to show that the act of crying for a man—and that record came out in a real "macho" era when any act of sensitivity was really frowned on—was a good thing and not some weak… defect almost," according to Clayson. With the operatic quality of his voice and his soulful singing, Orbison successfully maintained a strong sense of masculinity in dramatic melodies. His use of falsetto and his ability to quickly switch to a vulnerable delivery lent to the emotional buildup in his songs like "Blue Bayou," "I'm Hurtin'," and "Oh! Pretty Woman." After the success of "Oh! Pretty Woman," Orbison signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for a contract estimated at over $1 million. And soon the emotions Orbison displayed in his songs became tragically real when his wife Claudette died in a motorcycle accident in 1966, and again when two of his three children died in a fire in 1968. Orbison found happiness again in 1969 when he remarried, had another son, and returned to performing.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Orbison continued to tour the world. His stage presence won over audiences for years. He received a standing ovation when he toured in the United Kingdom with the Beatles in 1963 and later charmed adolescent audiences when on tour with the Eagles in the early 1980s. By 1980, Orbison's duet with Emmylou Harris of "That Lovin' You Feelin' Again" won the pair a Grammy award for the best country performance by a duo or group. Although Orbison is often associated with countrified pop music, Orbison's duet with Harris was the only time he ever made the country charts. Once produced by the influential Chet Atkins and backed by musicians of the "Nashville sound," Orbison was Nash-ville's first major pop success.

And even though—as Bruce Springsteen noted at Orbison's induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame—"no one sings like Roy Orbison," many artists have enjoyed the rewards of recording Orbison's songs and trying to mimic his vocal style. Springsteen borrowed much from Orbison for his Thunder Road album; John Lennon noted that he'd tried to write a "Roy Orbison song" with "Please Please Me"; Linda Ronstadt sold more of her 1977 version of "Blue Bayou" than Orbison sold of his original; and by the early 1980s, when the music charts were filled with nostalgic reissues or revivals of 1960s songs, heavy metal band Van Halen reached number twelve with a version of "Oh! Pretty Woman" in 1982. John Cougar recorded the same song in 1986.

Orbison's career was given an unconventional boost in 1986 when movie director David Lynch featured "In Dreams" during a brutal scene in Blue Velvet. During the scene the Dennis Hopper character sadistically had another character beaten; the dark quality of "In Dreams" perfectly fit the sinister montage-like cinematography that is Lynch's trademark. In 1987 Orbison was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame at its second ceremony by Bruce Springsteen, and was later the subject of a tribute concert that featured Orbison playing alongside such fans as Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, and k. d. lang. Orbison soon found himself in the company of Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and George Harrison, which resulted in the release of the big selling The Traveling Wilburys collaborative album. By 1988, Orbison's career was regaining momentum—he released a hit single, "You Got It," and recorded an album with songs and production by Elvis Costello, U2's Bono and The Edge, and with Jeff Lynne—but before that record was released he died at home of a heart attack on December 6, 1988. Mystery Girl, his posthumous comeback album, became the highest charting album of his career, eventually going platinum.