Roy Kelton Orbinson Dubbed"The Big O", was an American composer and musician known for his deep voice and his emotional ballads.
It was positioned by the magazine Rolling Stone Ranked No. 37 on his list of"Great Artists of All Time"and No. 13 on his"100 Greatest Singers of All Time"list. In 2002, Bilboard listed Orbinson at number 74 of the top 600 studio artists.
History
Roy Orbison was born on April 23, 1936 in Vernon Texas (2). His mother, Nadine, worked as a nurse while his father, Orbie Lee, was a builder. Roy was the couple's second child.
For his sixth birthday he was given a guitar, which he learned to play thanks to his father and his uncles Charlie Orbinson and Kenneth Schlutz. The Orbinson family moved to Forth Worth, Texas in 1942. In 1945, Roy won a contest on Vernon's KVWC station and this allowed him to have his own radio show in which he sang the same songs every Saturday.
In 1946, the family moved back to Wink, Texas, where they formed their first band at age 13 called"The Wink Westerners". Roy graduated from Wink High School in June 1954 and enrolled in an autumn seminar at North Texas State University in Denton (3).
Career
Wade Lee Moore and Dick Penner were two of Roy's teammates in Denton and together they had written a song called"The Ooby Dooby." The group managed to record this song along with"Hey, Miss Fannie"in a studio for Columbia Records. However, they were never called to sign a contract.
In the summer of 1955, the"Wink Westerners"met and began playing Rock and Roll songs at local clubs, including"Ooby Dooby." The grouping was an instant event and was granted a space of 30 minutes on Friday nights on the KMID station.
Orbison enrolled in the Odessa school wanting to study geology, but then switched to history and English. With some new members the band was renamed"The Teen Kings"as their style became predominantly Rock and Roll.
They got a second space on Saturdays on KOSA-TV which was part of the national CBS network. By that time Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley were in the city and recorded in the same show that Orbison.
By 1956 a new record label known as Je-Wel wanted to record with Orbison's band. Once the production was launched, Roy hand-delivered it to Cecill Hollifield, a music industry entrepreneur, who in turn connected them with Sam Phillips of Sun Records.
The latter showed interest in the production and recorded again the same songs ("Ooby Dooby","Trying to Get to You"and"Go Go Go") and offered a representation contract to the band. Ooby Dooby managed to reach the number 59 in the national listings of June of 1956 (4).
In 1956 the band split, but Orbison continued to work with Sun Records until 1958. That same year signed through Wesley Rose a contract with RCA Victor, where he came to work with Chet Atkins. In 1959 when the contract with that record company was finished, Rose quickly obtained to Orbison another contract this time with Monument Records.
That same year he wrote"Uptown"and"Only the Lonely", which reached second place in the Bilboard charts and was the first in the UK. The next success would be"Running Scared"which reached number one in the United States (5).
"Oh Pretty Woman"was recorded in August 1964. This was written by Roy along with fellow writer Bill Dees and became Orbison's biggest hit and in fact the most popular song he wrote in all the times. It was released in August in the United States and Canada and was number one in almost every country in the world (6).
MGM made a $ 1 million bid for the artist at Monument and began a slight decline in Orbison's career. Subsequently, in 1974 he signed with Mercury Records for a couple of years to again sign with Monument in an attempt to recharge his career. In 1978, he underwent open heart surgery in Nashville, but only three weeks later he was back in the ring. However, by the middle of this decade Orbinson stopped recording in studio.
Orbison returned to the music scene in 1980 with several presentations with well-known artists of the genre of the time. On December 6, 1988, he died of a heart attack at age 52. Her posthumous album"Mystery Girl", reached the fifth place in the lists of 1989, becoming the most successful one that it once recorded alone during its race (7).
Personal life
Ro Orbison had tragic personal problems that marked his life. On June 6, 1966, his wife Claudette, with whom he had married in 1957, died in a motorcycle accident. Then, in September 1968, the family home that had the couple at Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville, Tennessee was completely burned while Orbison was touring in England.
Two of his three children, Roy Jr. (born 1958) and Anthony (born 1962) were killed in the fire. His youngest son Wesley, who was only three years old at the time, was saved by Orbison's parents.
In May 1969 Roy married his second wife, Barbara, whom he had met in Leeds, England the year before. The couple had two children: Roy Kelton Jr. (born 1970) and Alexander Orbi (born 1975) (7).
References
- Rolling Stone. Roy Orbison's Triumphs and Tragedies. [Online] [Quoted on: December 23, 2016.]
- IMDB. Roy Orbison. [Online] [Quoted on: December 23, 2016.]
- New World Encyclopedia. Roy Orbison. [Online] February 23, 2015. [Quoted on: December 23, 2016.]
- RoyOrbison.com. ROY ORBISON - OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY. [Online] 2016. [Quoted on: December 23, 2016.]
- Ultimate Classic Rock. Remembering Roy Orbison's Triumphant Farewell. [Online] December 6, 2015. [Quoted on: December 23, 2016.]
- AllMusic. Roy Orbison. [Online] [Quoted on: December 23, 2016.]
- Bio. Roy Orbison Biography. [Online] May 18, 2016. [Quoted on: December 23, 2016.]