The last image of the first decade, the inimitable, Roy Orbison.
Roy Kelton Orbison was born in Vernon Texas on April 23 1936. Son of Orbie Lee Orbison, an oil well driller and car mechanic, and Nadine Shultz, a nurse. Both were unemployed during the Great Depression, so the family lived in Fort Worth for several years to find work, until a polio scare made them return to Vernon. To find work again, the family moved to West Texas to the town of Wink. Orbison would later describe the major components of life in Wink as “Football, oil fields, oil, grease and sand”. All the Orbison children were afflicted with poor eyesight. Roy was nearly blind and used thick corrective lenses from an early age. A bout with jaundice as a child gave him a sallow complexion. Orbison was not particularly confident in his appearance; he began dyeing his nearly white hair black when he was young. Orbison was given a guitar by his father for his birthday; by seven, Orbison stated, “I was finished, you know, for anything else”.
Whilst most performers during the 60s portrayed a defiant masculinity, many of Orbison’s songs instead conveyed a quiet, desperate vulnerability. He experienced tragedies in his life including the death of his first wife and his children on separate occasions. He was known for performing while standing still and solitary, wearing black clothes and dark sunglasses which lent an air of mystery to his persona.
His career stagnated through the 1970s, but several covers of his songs and the use of one in a film by David Lynch revived his career in the 1980s. He joined the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne and released an album in 1988. He died of a heart attack at the age of 52, at the zenith of his resurgence.
Orbison was initiated into the second class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 by longtime admirer Bruce Springsteen. The same year he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone listed Orbison as No. 37 in their list of The Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2002, Billboard magazine listed Orbison at No. 74 in the Top 600 recording artists. Rolling Stone rated Orbison at No. 13 in their list of The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time in 2008
