Roy Orbison

Roy Kelton Orbison (April 23, 1936 – December 6, 1988) was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist known for his distinctive and powerful voice, complex song structures, and dark, emotional ballads. Orbison's music is mostly in the rock music genre and his most successful periods were in the early 1960s and the late 1980s. He was nicknamed "The Caruso of Rock" and "The Big O". Many of Orbison's songs conveyed vulnerability at a time when most male rock-and-roll performers projected machismo. He always performed with very minimal motion and always in black clothes, matching his dyed black hair and dark sunglasses.

Born in Texas, Roy Orbison began singing in a country-and-western band as a teenager. He was signed by Sam Phillips of Sun Records in 1956 after Johnny Cash urged him to go to Sun Records. Elvis was leaving Sun and Phillips was looking to replace him. His first Sun recording, Oobie Doobie was a direct musical sound-a-like of Elvis's early Sun recordings. Roy had some success at Sun Records but enjoyed his greatest success with Monument Records. From 1960 to 1966, 22 of Roy Orbison's singles reached the Billboard Top 40. He wrote or co-wrote almost all of his own Top 10 hits, including "Only the Lonely" (1960), "Running Scared" (1961), "Crying" (1961), "In Dreams" (1963), and "Oh, Pretty Woman" (1964).

After the mid-1960s Orbison suffered a number of personal tragedies, and his career began to falter. However, he experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s, following the success of several cover versions of his songs. In 1988, he co-founded the Traveling Wilburys supergroup with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne.

Roy Orbison died of a heart attack that December at age 52. One month later, his song "You Got It" (1989) was released as a solo single, becoming his first hit to reach both the US and UK Top 10 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.