Roy Orbison
Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist known for his distinctive and powerful voice, complex song structures, and dark, emotional ballads. Orbison's most successful periods were in the early 1960s and the late 1980s. Many of Orbison's songs conveyed vulnerability at a time when most male performers projected strength. 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 country-and-western band as a teenager. He was signed by Sam Phillips of Sun Records in 1956 after being urged by
Johnny Cash. Elvis Presley was leaving Sun and Phillips was looking to replace him. His first Sun recording, "Ooby Dooby", was musically akin of Presley's early Sun recordings. He had moderate success at Sun, but enjoyed his greatest success with Monument Records. From 1960 to 1966, 22 of Orbison's singles reached the Billboard top 40. He wrote or almost all of his own top-10 hits, including "Only the Lonely", "Running Scared", "Crying", "In Dreams", "Oh, Pretty Woman", "I Drove All Night", "She's a Mystery to Me", "You Got It", and "California Blue".
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. In 1988, he 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" was released as a solo single, becoming his first hit to reach the top 10 in both the US and UK in nearly 25 years.
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 2002, Billboard magazine listed him at number 74 on its list of the Top 600 recording artists.
Early life
Orbison was born on April 23, 1936, in Vernon, Texas. He was the second of three sons born to Orbie Lee Orbison and Nadine Vesta Shults. His father was an oil-field driller, who struggled to find work after the Great Depression, and his mother enjoyed painting and writing poetry. His direct paternal ancestry was traced to Thomas Orbison from Lurgan, Ireland who settled in the Province of Pennsylvania in the middle of the 18th century. According to The Authorized Roy Orbison, a biography written by Orbison's son Alex, the family moved to Fort Worth in 1942 to find work in the aircraft factories. Due to eyesight problems, Roy Orbison wore thick glasses from the age of four.Orbison's father gave him a guitar on his sixth birthday, and he was taught how to play it by his father and older brother. He recalled, "I was finished, you know, for anything else" by the time he was seven, and music became the focus of his life. His major musical influence as a youth was country and western swing 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, Bob Wills, 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. Orbison also said that a formative experience was the regular singing sessions at Fort Worth, where he was surrounded by soldiers who were intensely emotional because they were about to be sent to the front line in World War II. In West Texas, he was exposed to rhythm and blues, western swing, 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. He began singing on a local radio show at age eight, and he became the show's host by the late 1940s. At the age of nine, Orbison won a contest on radio station KVWC, which led to his own radio show, on which he sang the same songs every week. He attended Denver Avenue Elementary School in Fort Worth until a polio scare in 1944 prompted his parents to send Orbison and his brother Grady Lee to Vernon to live with their grandmother. As World War II wound down, Roy's parents returned to Vernon.
The Orbison family moved again in 1946, to Wink, Texas, in search of employment. 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. 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, polite, and obliging. During recess at school, he played guitar by himself while the other kids were playing physical games. As a teenager, Orbison's lack of sporting ability left him with shyness and low self-esteem. He was always keen to sing, however, and considered his voice memorable, but not great.
Career
1949–1955: Wink Westerners
In 1949, Orbison formed the band "Wink Westerners" with school friends Billy Pat Ellis on drums, Slob Evans on bass fiddle, Richard West on piano, and James Morrow on electric mandolin. They played country and western swing standards and Glenn Miller jazz swing songs at local honky-tonk bars, and had a weekly morning radio show on KERB in Kermit, Texas. Their first performance was at a school assembly in 1953. They were offered $400 to play at a dance, and Orbison realized that he could make a living in music. Orbison was also part of a marching band and a singing octet. At the age of 15, he decided that instead of becoming a guitar player, he would use the guitar as an accompaniment to his singing.In 1953, the Wink Westerners entered a talent contest on KMID-TV in Midland, Texas. The group won the contest, resulting in a 30-minute spot on a local television show. After the show, Orbison asked the owner of the company sponsoring the show if he could sponsor the group for ongoing shows, which led to the Wink Westerners playing weekly shows on KMID-TV on Friday nights and on Odessa television station KOSA-TV on Saturday nights. Around this time, Orbison began dyeing his hair to jet black.
After graduating from high school in 1954, Orbison enrolled at North Texas State College in Denton. His plan was to study geology so he could secure work in the oil fields if music did not pay; however, he became bored with the course in its first year, and switched to history and English. Orbison preferred to play music with fellow students Billy Pat Ellis, Dick Penner, and Wade Moore. Penner and Moore had written a simple, catchy rockabilly song, "Ooby Dooby", which impressed Orbison, and he started looking into how he could make a recording of it. Orbison continued performing with the Wink Westerners after his first year. He then heard that his schoolmate Pat Boone had signed a record deal, and it further strengthened his resolve to become a professional musician. At a New Year's Eve dance in 1954, the Wink Westerners had mostly played country and western swing music throughout the night, but ended the night by playing Bill Haley & the Comets’ hit song "Shake, Rattle and Roll" repeatedly, which became the catalyst for the band switching to rock and roll music. Also, Orbison had seen Elvis Presley perform back during his days at North Texas State College in 1954, and was impressed by the shocking gyrations that Elvis exhibited on stage.
1955–1956: The Teen Kings
At the end of the spring semester of 1955, Orbison dropped out of North Texas State College, switching to Odessa Junior College. The Wink Westerners were disbanded in the fall of 1955, and Orbison formed a new band called the Teen Kings. The band was made of Orbison, Billy Pat Ellis, and James Morrow from the Wink Westerners, plus Jack Kennelly on bass and Johnny Wilson. At a dance event where the Teen Kings performed, Orbison met his future wife, Claudette Frady. Frady was 14 at the time, five years younger than Orbison.The Teen Kings's first recording was the song "Ooby Dooby", which was recorded at Norman Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico, in March 1956. It was published by Odessa-based start-up label Je–Wel as the B-side of the JE-WEL 101 single. The A-side of the single was "Tryin' to Get to You", a song previously recorded by Elvis Presley.
After "Ooby Dooby" was published by Je-Wel Records, Orbison became convinced that a larger record company would be able to sell more copies of the record, and he spoke to a lawyer about breaking the contract with Je-Wel. Initially, Orbison obtained an injunction to prevent Je-Wel from distributing the record, before they reached an agreement that the band would pay back the label the costs of producing the records. He was now free to find a new label to market Ooby Dooby, but a further setback was that he cut a demonstration tape of the song for Columbia Records, which they turned down, but had one of their contract artists release a recording of "Ooby Dooby" before Orbison could offer the tape to another record company.
Eventually, Sam Phillips's Sun Records signed up to record "Ooby Dooby", but the events which led to this are disputed. Some claim that Johnny Cash toured the Odessa area in 1955 and 1956, appearing on the same local TV show as the Wink Westerners, Cash said, "n late '55 or early '56, I was touring with Elvis when I met Roy in Texas... I told him to get in touch with Sun Records if he wanted to be a recording artist". Orbison has said that when he did this, Phillips told him, "Johnny Cash doesn't run my record company!". However, both Sam Philips and Billy Pat Ellis have disputed that Johnny Cash was involved. Three of the Teen Kings's band members have said that their relationship with Sun Records began when Odessa record-store owner Poppa Holifield played it over the telephone for Sam Phillips in April 1956, and Phillips offered the Teen Kings a contract.
The Teen Kings went to Sun Studio in Memphis, to re-record "Ooby Dooby" for publication by Sun Records. After an audition of the song, Sam Phillips signed the band up for "a year or two". However, the band's career soon slumped, since Orbison wanted to record emotional ballads rather than the rockabilly songs demanded by Sam Phillips, and Phillips's goal for a successor to Elvis Presley had moved on from Orbison to Carl Perkins. The Teen Kings were granted a reprieve when Carl Perkins was badly injured in a car crash, resulting in "Ooby Dooby" being released as Sun Single 242 in May 1956. The Teen Kings began an experimental tour of drive-in theaters in the Southern U.S. states with Sonny James, Johnny Horton, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash. Much influenced by Elvis Presley, Orbison performed frenetically, doing "everything we could to get applause, because we had only one hit record". Orbison also began writing songs in a rockabilly style, including "Go! Go! Go!" and "Rockhouse". In June 1956, "Ooby Dooby" peaked at number 59 in the Billboard charts and sold 200,000 copies, but the follow-up singles did not reach the charts.
The Teen Kings played alongside Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Warren Smith, and Eddie Bond at the Overton Park Shell on June 1, 1956, but Orbison's relationship with the rest of the band was deteriorating at this stage. Elvis Presley was in the audience for this show, and Orbison claimed that Elvis praised Orbison, but another band member says that it was actually Jack Kennelly whom Presley praised. Kennelly said, "Roy's dream was to be a star, and once Sam inflated his ego, he couldn't be a part of a unit. Roy became egomaniacal". In the summer of 1956, Orbison purchased a brand-new purple Cadillac and a diamond ring with his first royalty check from "Ooby Dooby"; however, the band soon found out that their paychecks from the concerts were not covering their costs and that life as a touring band was a demoralizing experience. The band's contract did not include any royalty payments when their songs were played on the radio, and Orbison had run out of money by late 1956. Orbison was encouraged by Norman Petty to record a single without the Teen Kings and the rest of the band walked on Roy during a recording session when told of a plan to rename the band "Roy Orbison and the Teen Kings". The band broke up in December 1956, and Sam Phillips said they were arguing about money, but the basic problem was that Orbison was too much of a loner and driven egoist. The lack of a band was a serious problem for Orbison's contract at Sun Records, since the label had no use for a singer who did not have a band.