Stephen Michael Reich (b. October 3, 1936) is an American composer who pioneered the style of minimalism. His innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns (examples are his early compositions, It's Gonna Rain and Come Out), and the use of simple, audible processes to explore musical concepts (for instance, Pendulum Music and Four Organs). These compositions, marked by their use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm and canons, have significantly influenced contemporary music, especially in the US. Reich's work took on a darker character in the 1980's with the introduction of historical themes as well as themes from his Jewish heritage.
The Guardian has described Reich as one of the few composers to have "altered the direction of musical history," has been called "America's greatest living composer" (the Village Voice) as well as "...among the great composers of the century" (New York Times).
Reich's style of composition has influenced many other composers and musical groups, including Philip Glass (especially his early pieces), John Adams, the progressive rock band King Crimson, and the art-pop and electronic musician Brian Eno.
Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959) known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll. Although his success lasted only a year and a half before his death in an airplane crash, Holly is described by critic Bruce Elder as "the single most influential creative force in early rock and roll."
His works and innovations inspired and influenced contemporary and later musicians, notably The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Don McLean, and Bob Dylan, and exerted a profound influence on popular music.
Holly was amongst the first group of inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
Charles Hardin Holley was born on September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas, U.S.A. to Lawrence Odell and Ella Pauline (Drake) Holley. Holly was always called "Buddy" by his family. Older brothers Travis and Larry taught their younger brother to play a variety of instruments including the guitar, 4-string banjo and lap steel guitar. At the age of five his young voice and exuberance won him a talent contest singing a then-popular song, Have You Ever Gone Sailing (Down the River of Memories).
In 1949, still retaining his childish soprano, he recorded a bluesy solo rendering of Hank Snow's "My Two Timin' Woman" on a wire recorder borrowed by a friend who worked in a music shop.
This recording demonstrates a gift for guitar riffs and phrasings and for vocal turns of phrase.
In 1952 he met Bob Montgomery at Hutchinson Junior High School. They shared an interest in music and teamed up as "Buddy and Bob." Initially influenced by bluegrass music, they sang harmony duets at local clubs and high school talent shows. The duo performed on a local radio station KDAV Sunday broadcast that made them a top local act. Hutchinson Junior High School now has a mural honoring Holly and Lubbock High School, where he sang in the Lubbock High School Choir, also honors the late musician.
Holly saw Elvis Presley sing in Lubbock in 1955 and began to incorporate a rockabilly style with Chet Atkins style lead guitar, strong rhythm acoustic and slap bass into his music.
On October 15 he opened the bill for Presley in Lubbock, catching the eye of a Nashville talent scout.
Holly's transition to rock continued when he opened for Bill Haley & His Comets at a local show organized by Eddie Crandall, the manager for Marty Robbins.
Following this performance Decca Records signed him to a contract in February 1956, misspelling his name as "Holly."
He thereafter adopted the misspelled name for his professional career. Holly formed his own band, later to be called The Crickets and consisting of Holly (lead guitar and vocalist), Niki Sullivan (guitar), Joe B. Mauldin (bass), and Jerry Allison (drums). They went to Nashville for three recording sessions with producer Owen Bradley.
However, he chafed under a restrictive atmosphere that allowed him little input.
Among the tracks he recorded was an early version of That'll Be The Day, which took its title from a line that John Wayne's character says repeatedly in the 1956 film, The Searchers.
This initial version of the song played more slowly and about half an octave higher than the later hit version.
Decca released two singles, Blue Days, Black Nights and Modern Don Juan, that failed to make an impression. On January 22, 1957, Decca informed Holly that his contract would not be renewed, insisting however that he could not record the same songs for anyone else for five years.
Holly then hired Norman Petty as manager, and the band began recording at Petty's studios in Clovis, New Mexico. Petty contacted music publishers and labels, and Brunswick Records, a subsidiary of Decca, signed the Crickets on March 19, 1957.
Holly signed as a solo artist with another Decca subsidiary, Coral Records. This put him in the unusual position of having two recording contracts at the same time.
On May 27, 1957, That'll Be The Day was released as a single, credited to the Crickets to try to bypass Decca's claimed legal rights. When the song became a hit Decca decided not to press its claim. That'll Be the Day topped the US Best Sellers in Stores chart on September 23 and was the UK Singles Chart for three weeks in November. The Crickets performed That'll Be the Day and Peggy Sue on The Ed Sullivan Show on December 1.
They also sang Peggy Sue on The Arthur Murray Party on December 29 and were given a polite introduction by Kathryn Murray.
The kinescopes of these programs are the only record of their 1957 television appearances.
Holly helped win over an all-black audience to rock-and-roll/rockabilly when the Crickets were booked at New York's Apollo Theater for August 16–22, 1957.
Unlike the immediate acceptance shown in the 1978 movie The Buddy Holly Story, it actually took several performances for the audience to warm to him. In August 1957, the Crickets were the only white performers on a national tour including black neighborhood theaters.
As Holly was signed both as a solo artist and a member of the Crickets two debut albums were released: The "Chirping" Crickets on November 27, 1957 and Buddy Holly on February 20, 1958.
His singles "Peggy Sue" and "Oh Boy!" reached the top ten of United States and United Kingdom charts. Buddy Holly and the Crickets toured Australia in January 1958 and the UK in March.
Their third and final album, That'll Be the Day, was put together from early recordings and was released in April.
In June 1958, he met Maria Elena Santiago, who worked as a receptionist for Murray Deutch, an executive for New York publisher Peer-Southern Music.
Holly managed to have Santiago invited to a luncheon at Howard Johnson's, thanks to Deutch's secretary, Jo Harper. He asked her to have dinner with him that night at P. J. Clarke's. Holly proposed marriage to her on their very first date. "While we were having dinner, he got up and came back with his hands behind his back. He brought out a red rose and said, 'This is for you. Would you marry me?'" He went to her guardian's house the next morning to get her approval.
Santiago at first thought he was kidding, but they married in Lubbock on August 15, 1958, less than two months later.
"I'd never had a boyfriend in my life. I'd never been on a date before. But when I saw Buddy, it was like magic. We had something special: love at first sight," she told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal on what would have been their 50th wedding anniversary.
The newlyweds honeymooned in Acapulco.
Maria Elena traveled on tours, doing everything from the laundry to equipment setup to ensuring the group got paid. Although Holly had already begun to become disillusioned with Norman Petty before meeting his bride, it was through Maria Elena and her aunt Provi, who was the head of Latin American music at Peer Southern, that he began to fully realize what was going on with his manager, who was paying the band's royalties into his own company's account.
Holly wrote the song "True Love Ways" about his relationship with his young wife. It was recorded in her presence on October 21, 1958 at Decca's Pythian Temple, with Dick Jacob, Coral-Brunswick's new head of Artists & Repertoire, serving as both producer and conductor of the eighteen-piece orchestra, which included members of the New York Symphony Orchestra, NBC Television's house orchestra and Abraham "Boomie" Richman, formerly of Benny Goodman's band.
It was not until Holly died that many fans became aware of his marriage.
The ambitious Holly became increasingly interested in the New York music/recording/publishing scene, while his bandmates wanted to go back home to Lubbock. As a result, the group split up in late 1958. The Hollys settled in at Greenwich Village, New York, in the new Brevoort apartment block at 9th Street and Fifth Avenue. It was here that he recorded the series of acoustic songs, including "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" and "What to Do," known as the "Apartment Tapes," which were released after his death.
The Hollys frequented many of New York's music venues, including The Village Gate, Blue Note, Village Vanguard, and Johnny Johnson's. Maria Elena reported that Buddy was keen to learn finger-style flamenco guitar and would often visit her aunt's home to play the piano there. He wanted to develop collaborations between soul singers and rock 'n' roll, hoping to make an album with Ray Charles and gospel legend Mahalia Jackson. He also had ambitions to work in film, like Elvis Presley and Eddie Cochran, and registered for acting classes with Lee Strasburg's Actors' Studio, where the likes of Marlon Brando and James Dean had trained.
However, he was still having trouble getting his royalties from Petty, so he hired the noted lawyer Harold Orenstein at the recommendation of his friends, the Everly Brothers, who had engaged Orenstein following their own disputes with their manager Wesley Rose. Yet, with the money still being withheld by Petty and with rent due, Buddy was forced to go back on the road.
Holly was offered a spot in the Winter Dance Party, a three-week tour across the Midwest opening on January 23, 1959, by the GAC agency, with other notable performers such as Dion and the Belmonts, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. He assembled a backing band consisting of Tommy Allsup (guitar), Waylon Jennings (bass) and Carl Bunch (drums) and billed as The Crickets.
The tour turned out to be a miserable ordeal for the performers, who were subjected to long overnight travel in a bus plagued with a faulty heating system in −25 °F (−32 °C) temperatures.
The bus also broke down several times between stops. Following a performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2, 1959, Holly chartered a small airplane to take him to the next stop on the tour. He, Valens, Richardson and the pilot were killed en route to Moorhead, Minnesota, when their plane crashed soon after taking off from nearby Mason City in the early morning hours of February 3. Bandmate Waylon Jennings gave up his seat on the plane, causing Holly to jokingly tell Jennings, "I hope your ol' bus freezes up!" Jennings shot back facetiously, "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes!" It was a statement that would haunt Jennings for decades.
Don McLean referred to it as "The Day the Music Died" in his song "American Pie".
Holly's funeral was held on February 7, 1959, at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock.
The service was officiated by Ben D. Johnson, who had presided at the Hollys' wedding just months earlier. The pallbearers were Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan, Bob Montgomery, Sonny Curtis and Phil Everly. Waylon Jennings was unable to attend due to his commitment to the still touring Winter Dance Party. The body was interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery in the eastern part of the city. Holly's headstone carries the correct spelling of his surname (Holley) and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar.
Holly's pregnant wife, a widow after barely six months of marriage, miscarried soon after, ending that part of the Holly family tree. María Elena Holly did not attend the funeral and has never visited the grave site. She later told the Avalanche-Journal:
In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn't with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane.
Holly's music was sophisticated for its day, including the use of instruments considered novel for rock and roll, such as the celesta (heard on "Everyday"). Holly was an influential lead and rhythm guitarist, notably on songs such as "Peggy Sue" and "Not Fade Away." While Holly could pump out boy-loves-girl songs with the best of his contemporaries, other songs featured more sophisticated lyrics and more complex harmonies and melodies than had previously appeared in the genre.
Many of his songs feature a unique vocal "hiccup" technique, a glottal stop, to emphasize certain words in any given song, especially the rockers. Other singers (such as Elvis and Mekilo Rushlow ) have used a similar technique, though less obviously and consistently. An example of this can be found at the start of the raucous "Rave On!": "uh-Weh-uh-eh-uh-ell, the little things you say and do, make me want to be with you-uh-ou...".
Holly set the template for the standard rock and roll band: two guitars, bass, and drums.
He was also one of the first in the genre to write, produce, and perform his own songs.
Holly managed to bridge the racial divide that marked music in America. Along with Elvis and others, Holly made rock and roll, with its roots in rockabilly country music and blues inspired rhythm and blues music, more popular among a broad white audience. From listening to their recordings, one had difficulty determining if the Crickets were white or black singers. Holly indeed sometimes played with black musicians Little Richard and Chuck Berry. The Crickets were only the second white rock group to tour Great Britain. Holly's essential eyeglasses encouraged other musicians, such as John Lennon, also to wear their glasses during performances.
Contrary to popular belief, teenagers John Lennon and Paul McCartney did not attend a Holly concert, although they watched his television appearance on Sunday Night at the London Palladium; Tony Bramwell, a school friend of McCartney and George Harrison, did. Bramwell met Holly, and freely shared his records with all three. Lennon and McCartney later cited Holly as a primary influence.
(Their band's name, The Beatles, was chosen partly in homage to Holly's Crickets.) The Beatles did a cover version of "Words of Love" that was a close reproduction of Holly's version, released on late 1964's Beatles for Sale (in the U.S., in June 1965 on Beatles VI). During the January 1969 sessions for the Let It Be album, the Beatles played a slow impromptu version of "Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues" — although not written by Holly, it was popularized by him -- with Lennon mimicking Holly's vocal style; the recording was eventually released in the mid-1990's on Anthology 3. In addition, John Lennon recorded a cover version of "Peggy Sue" on his 1975 album Rock 'n' Roll. McCartney owns the publishing rights to Holly's song catalogue.
A 17-year-old Bob Dylan attended the January 31, 1959, show, two nights before Holly's death. Dylan referred to this in his 1998 Grammy acceptance speech for his Time out of Mind being named Album of the Year:
"And I just want to say that when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory and I was three feet away from him...and he looked at me. And I just have some sort of feeling that he was — I don't know how or why -- but I know he was with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way."
Keith Richards attended one of Holly's performances, where he heard "Not Fade Away" for the first time. The Rolling Stones had an early hit covering the song.
Holly influenced many other singers during and after a career that lasted barely two years. Keith Richards once said that Holly had "an influence on everybody."
In an August 24, 1978 Rolling Stone interview, Bruce Springsteen told Dave Marsh, "I play Buddy Holly every night before I go on; that keeps me honest."
The Grateful Dead performed "Not Fade Away" 530 times over the course of their career, making it their seventh most-performed song. The song also appears on eight of their official live recording releases.
Various rock and roll histories have asserted that the singing group The Hollies were named in homage to Buddy Holly. According to the band's website, although the group admired Holly (and years later produced an album covering some of his songs), their name was inspired primarily by the sprigs of holly in evidence around Christmas of 1962.
Don McLean's popular 1971 ballad "American Pie" is inspired by Holly and the day of the plane crash. The American Pie album is dedicated to Holly.
Buddy Holly released only three albums in his lifetime. Nonetheless, he recorded so prolifically that Coral Records was able to release brand-new albums and singles for 10 years after his death, although the technical quality was very mixed, some being studio quality and others home recordings. Holly's simple demonstration recordings were overdubbed by studio musicians to bring them up to then-commercial standards. The best of these overdubbed records is often considered to be the first posthumous single, the 1959 coupling of "Peggy Sue Got Married" and "Crying, Waiting, Hoping", produced by Jack Hansen, with added backing vocals by the Ray Charles Singers in simulation of an authentic Crickets record.
"Crying, Waiting, Hoping" was actually supposed to be the "A" side of the 45, with the backup group effectively echoing Buddy's call-and-response vocal. The Hansen session, in which Holly's last six original compositions were overdubbed, was issued on the 1960 Coral LP The Buddy Holly Story, Vol. 2. But the best "posthumous" records were the studio recordings, which included "Wishing" and "Reminiscing".
Buddy Holly continued to be promoted and sold as an "active" artist, and his records had a loyal following, especially in Europe. The demand for unissued Holly material was so great that Norman Petty resorted to overdubbing whatever he could find: alternate takes of studio recordings, originally rejected masters, "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" and the other five 1959 tracks (adding new surf-guitar arrangements), and even Holly's amateur demos from 1954 (where the low-fidelity vocals are often muffled behind the new orchestrations). The last new Buddy Holly album was Giant (featuring the single "Love Is Strange"), issued in 1969. Between the 1959–60 Jack Hansen overdubs, the 1960s Norman Petty overdubs, various alternate takes, and Holly's undubbed originals, collectors can often choose from multiple versions of the same song.
In February 1984, MCA mastering engineer Steve Hoffman sent what are known as safety copies of several Buddy Holly master recordings to John Pickering of The Picks who took them to Sound Masters studios in Houston, Texas. There, the reunited group overdubbed their new vocal parts onto at least 60 recordings, and sent them back to Hoffman at MCA. The general consensus seems to be that, under Hoffman's influence, MCA would have issued these "new" recordings as an album, perhaps to commemorate the 25th year since Holly's death. This however, was not to be.
Not long afterwards, Hoffman was fired by MCA, for, among other things, stealing master tapes of Holly material and attempting to sell them to parties such as the Norman Petty estate. A short time later, a raid produced the stolen tapes, which were returned to MCA. With these plans having fallen through, Pickering decided to take matters into his own hands and release them himself.
These recordings slowly made their way to the public on privately pressed albums like The Original Chirping Sound and Buddy Holly Not Fade Away. In 1992, Pickering approached Viceroy Records to arrange a deal for major nationwide distribution of these overdubbed recordings, who hit a brick wall when MCA made it clear that Pickering did not have proper legal clearance to release such recordings.
Andy McKaie, an MCA executive, has stated that Pickering has never bothered to ask for licensing on the songs. To this day, budget labels release these recordings.
Holly's life story inspired a Hollywood biographical film, The Buddy Holly Story. Star Gary Busey received a nomination for Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Holly. The movie was widely criticized by the rock community and Holly's friends and family for its inaccuracies. This led Paul McCartney to produce and host his own tribute to Holly in 1985, titled The Real Buddy Holly Story. This video includes interviews with Keith Richards, Phil and Don Everly, Sonny Curtis, Jerry Allison, Holly's family, and McCartney himself, among others.
In 1987, Marshall Crenshaw portrayed Buddy Holly in the movie La Bamba. He is featured performing at the Surf Ballroom and boarding the doomed airplane with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. Crenshaw's version of "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" is featured on the La Bamba original motion picture soundtrack.
Holly did not gain widespread acceptance in Lubbock until after his death. The historian Richard Driver of Texas Tech University notes that he did not enjoy his success or national popularity in Lubbock, despite being rooted in Lubbock as his career took off between 1956-1958. Holly moved to New York City after marrying Maria Elena Santiago in August 1958 and ending his career with the Crickets that fall. In Lubbock, recognition of musicians or their popularity was rare, even as numerous musicians and performers emerged from the city and surrounding region at the same time as Holly and in successive years. Nevertheless, Driver argues that Holly's connection with Lubbock garnered the city international recognition as his hometown, especially with the musicians of the British Invasion. Later acts such as The Clash also sought to visit his hometown just to view where he went to high school.
Downtown Lubbock has a "walk of fame" with plaques to various area artists such as Glenna Goodacre, Mac Davis, Maines Brothers Band, and Waylon Jennings, with a larger than life-size statue of Buddy Holly by sculptor Grant Speed (1980) playing his Fender guitar as its centerpiece. As of September 2010 the statue has been taken down for cleaning. The statue, along with the West Texas Walk of Fame, will be relocated to the Buddy & Maria Elena Holly Park directly west of the Buddy Holly Center at a later date. Downtown Lubbock also features Buddy Holly Avenue and the Buddy Holly Center, which is a museum dedicated to Texas art and music.
Billy [William Moses] Roberts [Jr.] (b. 1936, Greenville, SC) is an American songwriter and musician credited with composing the 1960's rock standard Hey Joe, the best known version of which is by The Jimi Hendrix Experience).
Roberts was a relatively obscure California based folk singer, guitarist and harmonica player who performed on the West Coast coffee-house circuit in the late 1950's and early 1960's. He registered Hey Joe for copyright in the U.S. in 1962. Roberts later recorded the country rock album Thoughts of California with the band Grits in San Francisco in 1975, produced by Hillel Resner.
After a severe car accident in the 1990's Roberts was hospitalized in Sonoma County, California for many years.
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Billy Roberts - Hey Joe (performed by Jimi Hendrix)
Hey Joe is an American popular song from the 1960's that has become a rock standard, and as such has been performed in a multitude of musical styles. Diverse credits and claims have led to confusion as to its authorship and genesis. It tells the story of a man on the run after shooting his wife. The earliest known commercial recording, and the first hit version, is the late 1965 recording by the Los Angeles garage band, The Leaves, although currently the best-known version is the The Jimi Hendrix Experience's 1966 recording, their debut single.
Roberts’ song gained many fans in Los Angeles, which led to fast-paced recordings in 1965 and 1966 by The Leaves, The Surfaris, Love, and The Byrds, swiftly becoming a rock classic.
Both Dino Valente and The Byrds' David Crosby have been reported as helping to popularize the song before it was recorded by The Leaves in December 1965. "Hey Joe" has been recorded by hundreds of artists since.
The Leaves recorded and released three versions of "Hey Joe": the first version was released in November/December 1965; the third version was their hit in May/June 1966 (Billboard #31).
The Surfaris version was released in June 1966, but some sources claim it was recorded in September 1965, before The Leaves' first version.
Folk rock singer Tim Rose’s slow version, (recorded in 1966 and claimed to be Rose's arrangement of a wholly traditional song) inspired the first single by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. One documentary shows interviews with Chas Chandler, who, having just left The Animals, and was focusing on managing other acts. He had been seeking out an artist to record a full-on rock version of "Hey Joe", and Hendrix fit the bill. Chandler had seen Rose performing at the Cafe Wha? in New York City (Hendrix himself had recently played a few times in the same venue). Some accounts credit the slower version of the song by the British band The Creation as being the inspiration for Hendrix's version; Chandler and Hendrix eventually saw them perform the song after Jimi finally arrived in the UK along with Chandler although their version was not released until after Hendrix's. It is unclear if the members of the Creation had heard Rose's version. Released in December 1966, Hendrix's version became a worldwide hit, entering the UK top ten within the month in January 1967 and remains the best known recording of the song.
The single was released in the United States on May 1, 1967 with the B-side "51st Anniversary."
The song has also been perfored by, among others, Patti Smith, the Warlocks, The Mothers of Invention (a parody), "Weird Al" Yankovic, Seal, Eddie Murphy, Joe Cocker, The Who, and Deep Purple.
1,881 guitarists played Hey Joe in Wrocław on May 1, 2007, setting a new Guinness record.
"Hey Joe" was the last song Jimi Hendrix played at the conclusion Woodstock, as an encore to a crowd of about 80,000
The rock band The Who occasionally performed "Hey Joe" during their 1989 tour. Their version was influenced by Jimi Hendrix's arrangement and was dedicated to him.
The Hendrix version appears in the following films:
Forrest Gump Easy Rider Empire Records Wayne's World 2 Death Sentence Reaper Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay Crooklyn
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Roy Kelton Orbison (April 23, 1936 – December 6, 1988) was an American singer-songwriter and musician, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly / country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis. His greatest success came with Monument Records in the early to mid 1960s when 22 of his songs placed on the US Billboard Top 40, including Only the Lonely, Crying, In Dreams, and Oh, Pretty Woman. 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. In 1988, he joined the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne and also released a new solo album. He died of a heart attack in December that year, at the zenith of his resurgence. His life was marred with tragedy, including the death of his first wife and two of his children in separate accidents.
Orbison was a natural baritone, yet could sing high tenor notes with ease; commentators have suggested that he had a three- or four-octave range.
The combination of Orbison's powerful, impassioned voice and complex musical arrangements led many commentators to refer to his music as operatic, giving him the sobriquet "the Caruso of Rock." Performers as disparate as Elvis Presley and Bono stated his voice was, respectively, the greatest and most distinctive they had ever heard.
While most men in rock and roll in the 1950s and 1960s portrayed a defiant masculinity, many of Orbison's songs instead conveyed a quiet, desperate vulnerability. 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.
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 placed Orbison at number 37 in their list of The Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2002, Billboard magazine listed Orbison at number 74 in the Top 600 recording artists.
Roy Orbison was born in Vernon, Texas, the middle 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 moved to Fort Worth for several years to find work, until a polio scare prompted them to return to Vernon. To find work again, the family then moved to the town of Wink in West Texas. Orbison would later describe the major components of life in Wink as "Football, oil fields, oil, grease and sand," and in later years expressed relief that he was able to leave the desolate town.
All the Orbison children were afflicted with poor eyesight; Roy used thick corrective lenses from an early age. A bout with jaundice as a child gave him a sallow complexion, and his ears protruded prominently. Orbison was not particularly confident in his appearance; he began dyeing his nearly white hair black when he was young.
He was quiet and self-effacing, remarkably polite and obliging – a product, his biographer Alan Clayson wrote, of his Southern upbringing.
However, Orbison was readily available to sing, and often became the focus of attention when he did. He considered his voice memorable if not great.
On his sixth birthday, Orbison's father gave him a guitar. Orbison later recalled that, by the age of seven, "I was finished, you know, for anything else"; music would be his life.
Orbison's major musical influences as a youth were in country music. He was particularly moved by the way Lefty Frizzell sang, slurring syllables.
He also enjoyed Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers. One of the first musicians he heard in person was Ernest Tubb playing on the back of a flatbed truck in Fort Worth. In West Texas, however, he was exposed to many forms of music: "sepia" — a euphemism for what became known as rhythm and blues (R&B); Tex-Mex; orchestral Mantovani, and Zydeco. The Zydeco favorite "Jole Blon" was one of the first songs Orbison sang in public. At eight, Orbison began appearing on a local radio show. By the late 1940s, he was the host.
In high school, Orbison and some friends formed The Wink Westerners, an informal band that would play country standards and Glenn Miller songs. When they were offered $400 to play at a dance, Orbison realized that he could make a living in music. Following high school, Orbison enrolled at North Texas State College, planning to study geology so that he could secure work in the oil fields if music did not pay.
He formed another band called The Teen Kings, and sang at night while working in the oil fields or studying during the day. Orbison saw his classmate Pat Boone get signed for a record deal, further strengthening his resolve to become a professional musician. His geology grades dropping, he switched to Odessa Junior College to consider becoming a teacher. While living in Odessa, Orbison drove 355 miles (571 km) to Dallas to see and be stunned by the on-stage antics of Elvis Presley, then a rising star in the southern states.
Johnny Cash toured the area in 1955, playing on the same local radio show as the Teen Kings and suggested that Orbison approach Sam Phillips at Sun Records, home of rockabilly stars such as Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Cash. Phillips told him curtly, "Johnny Cash doesn't run my record company!"
Phillips was convinced to listen to a record by the Teen Kings named Ooby Dooby, a song composed in mere minutes atop a fraternity house at North Texas State.
He was impressed and offered the Teen Kings a contract in 1956.
The Teen Kings went to Memphis and although Orbison had grown weary of Ooby Dooby, Phillips wanted to cut the record again in a better studio. Orbison rankled quietly at Phillips' dictating what the band would play and how Orbison was to sing it. However, with Phillips' production, the record broke into the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 59 and selling 200,000 copies.
The Teen Kings toured with Sonny James, Johnny Horton, and Cash. Much influenced by Elvis Presley, Orbison performed frenetically, doing "everything we could to get applause because we had only one hit record."
The Teen Kings also began writing more material such as "Go! Go! Go!" and "Rockhouse", generally in standard rockabilly style. The band ultimately split over disputed writing credits and royalties, but Orbison stayed in Memphis and asked his 16-year-old girlfriend, Claudette Frady, to join him.
They stayed in Phillips' home, where they slept in separate rooms; in the studio Orbison concentrated on the mechanics of recording. Sam Phillips remembered being much more impressed with Orbison's mastery of the guitar than his voice; a ballad Orbison wrote called The Clown was met with lukewarm appreciation at best. Sun Records producer Jack Clement told Orbison after hearing it that he would never make it as a ballad singer.
He found a modicum of success at Sun Records and found his way into Elvis Presley's social circle, once going to pick up a date for Presley in his purple Cadillac. Orbison sold "Claudette", a song he wrote about Frady -- whom he married in 1957 -- to The Everly Brothers and it appeared on the B side of their smash hit All I Have To Do Is Dream. The first and perhaps only royalties Orbison earned from Sun Records enabled him to make a down-payment on his own Cadillac. However, frustrated at Sun, Orbison gradually stopped recording, toured music circuits around Texas to make a living, and for seven months in 1958 quit performing completely.
His car repossessed and in dire financial straits, he often depended on family and friends for funds.
For a brief period in the late 1950's Orbison made his living at Acuff-Rose, a songwriting firm concentrating mainly on country music. After spending an entire day writing a song, he would make several demo tapes at a time and send them to Wesley Rose, who would try to find the musical acts to record them. Orbison attempted to sell songs he recorded that were written by other writers to RCA Victor as well, working with and being completely in awe of Chet Atkins, who had played guitar with Presley. Orbison tried one song penned by Boudleaux Bryant called "Seems to Me". Bryant's impression of Orbison was "a timid, shy kid who seemed to be rather befuddled by the whole music scene. I remember the way he sang then — softly, prettily but almost bashfully, as if someone might be disturbed by his efforts and reprimand him."
After two tepid attempts with RCA Victor, they decided not to option Orbison for another song. Wesley Rose maneuvered Orbison into the sights of producer Fred Foster at Monument Records.
In his first sessions at Monument in Nashville, Orbison took on a song that RCA refused, Paper Boy, and wrote another, Pretty One. Playing shows late into the night, and living with his wife and young child in his tiny apartment, he often sought refuge by taking his guitar to his car and writing songs there. Songwriter Joe Melson, who had a passing acquaintance with Orbison, tapped on his car window one day in Texas in 1959 and the two decided to try to write some songs together. They experimented with the doo-wop backup singers arranged by Anita Kerr in a song called "Uptown"; Orbison was allowed to use strings on the record, which he enjoyed.
Melson later recalled, "We stood in the studio, listening to the playbacks and thought it was the most beautiful sound in the world."
The song earned a modest spot at No. 72 on the Billboard Top 100 and Orbison set his goal on negotiating a contract with an upscale nightclub somewhere. Rock and Roll itself, in its infancy in the late 1950's, was stalled. Elvis Presley was in the Army. Eddie Cochran and fellow Texan Buddy Holly -- both of whom Orbison had previously toured with -- had died, to Orbison's deep astonishment. Little Richard found religion and Chuck Berry had been arrested and spent time in jail. Orbison's former Sun Records colleague Jerry Lee Lewis was disgraced when his marriage to his 13-year-old cousin was reported widely in the press. In their wake, pop music filled the radio waves, dominated by teen idol crooners who sang cleansed formulas like those about The Twist dance craze and "death discs" like
Endless Sleep (1958) and
Teen Angel (1960).
Influenced by contemporaneous hits such as Come Back to Me My Love and Come Softly to Me, Orbison and Melson wrote a song in April 1960 which, when recorded, employed strings, the Anita Kerr doo-wop backup singers, and finally, an astounding note hit by Orbison in falsetto that showcased a powerful voice which, according to biographer Clayson, "came not from his throat but deeper within."
It was titled Only the Lonely, and Orbison and Melson tried to pitch it to Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers, both of whom turned it down. Orbison released his own version instead and it shot to No. 2 on the Hot 100 in the U.S. and hit No. 1 in the UK and Australia. According to Orbison, the subsequent songs he wrote with Melson during this period were constructed with his voice in mind, specifically to showcase its range and power. He told Rolling Stone in 1988: "I liked the sound of [my voice]. I liked making it sing, making the voice ring, and I just kept doing it. And I think that somewhere between the time of Ooby Dooby and Only the Lonely, it kind of turned into a good voice."
Instantly Orbison was in high demand. He appeared on American Bandstand and toured the U.S. for three months non-stop with Patsy Cline. When Presley heard Only the Lonely for the first time, he bought a box of copies to pass to his friends.
Melson and Orbison followed it with the more complex Blue Angel which peaked at No. 9, a self-performed version of Claudette, and I'm Hurtin', which rose to No. 27.
Orbison was now able to move his wife and son to Nashville full-time. Back in the studio, seeking a change from the doo-wop styled pop sound of Only the Lonely and I'm Hurtin', Orbison worked on a new song, Running Scared, based loosely on the bolero rhythm typified by Maurice Ravel's famous usage; the song was about a man on the run with a woman, followed by another man who is trying to take her away. Orbison encountered a difficulty when he found himself unable to hit the song's highest note without his voice breaking. He was backed by an orchestra in the studio and the sound engineer told him he would have to sing louder than his accompaniment because the orchestra was unable to be softer than his voice.[26] Fred Foster then put Orbison in the corner of the studio and surrounded him with coat racks in an improvised isolation booth to emphasize his voice. Orbison was unhappy with the first two takes, but in the third, he abandoned the idea of using falsetto and, to the astonishment of everyone present, sang the final high G sharp naturally. On that third take, "Running Scared" was completed. Fred Foster later recalled, "He did it, and everybody looked around in amazement. Nobody had heard anything like it before."
Just weeks later "Running Scared" reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart. The composition of Orbison's following hits reflected "Running Scared": a story about an emotionally vulnerable man facing loss or grief, culminating with a surprise ending in a crescendo that employed Orbison's dynamic voice. "Crying" followed in July 1961 and reached No. 2; it was coupled with an R&B up-tempo song titled "Candy Man" written by Fred Neil, that stayed on the charts for two months.
Orbison's second son was born in 1962, and Orbison hit No. 4 in the U.S. and No. 2 in the UK with Dream Baby, an upbeat song written by veteran country songwriter Cindy Walker. The rest of the year he charted with The Crowd, Leah, and Workin' For the Man, which he wrote about working one summer in the oil fields near Wink.
His relationship with Joe Melson, however, was deteriorating over Melson's growing concerns that his own solo career would never get off the ground.
Lacking the photogenic looks of many of his rock and roll contemporaries, Orbison eventually developed a persona that did not reflect his personality. He had no publicist in the early 1960s, no presence in fan magazines, and his single sleeves did not feature his picture. Life magazine called him an "anonymous celebrity."
After leaving his thick eyeglasses on an airplane in 1962 or 1963, Orbison was forced to wear his Ray-Ban Wayfarer prescription sunglasses on stage and found that he preferred them. His biographers suggest that although he had a good sense of humor and was never morose, Orbison was very shy and suffered from severe stage fright; wearing sunglasses helped him hide somewhat from the attention. The black clothes and desperation in his songs led to an aura of mystery and introversion.
Years later, Orbison said "I wasn't trying to be weird, you know? I didn't have a manager who told me to dress or how to present myself or anything. But the image developed of a man of mystery and a quiet man in black somewhat of a recluse, although I never was, really."
His dark and brooding persona, combined with his tremulous voice in lovelorn ballads marketed to teenagers, helped Orbison corner the pop market in the early 1960s. He had a string of hits in 1963 with "In Dreams" (No. 7 in the U.S.), "Falling", "Mean Woman Blues" (No. 5 in the U.S.), and "Blue Bayou", all of which also hit the Top 10 in the UK.
He finished the year with a Christmas song written by Willie Nelson titled Pretty Paper.
As "In Dreams" was released in April 1963, Orbison was asked to replace guitarist Duane Eddy on a tour of the UK in top billing, with a local band that was becoming massively popular named The Beatles. When he arrived in England, however, he saw the amount of advertising devoted to the quartet and realized he was no longer the main draw. He had never heard of them and, annoyed, asked hypothetically, "What's a Beatle anyway?" to which John Lennon replied after tapping his shoulder, "I am."
On opening night, Orbison opted to go onstage first although he was the more established act. Known for having raucous shows expressing an extraordinary amount of energy, Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr stood dumbfounded backstage as Orbison performed completely still and simply sang through fourteen encores.
Finally, when the audience began chanting "We want Roy!" again, Lennon and McCartney prevented Orbison from going on again by physically holding him back.
Starr later said, "In Glasgow, we were all backstage listening to the tremendous applause he was getting. He was just standing there, not moving or anything."
Through the tour, however, both acts quickly learned to get along, a process made easier by the fact that the Beatles admired his work.
Orbison felt a kinship with Lennon, but it was Harrison with whom he would later form a strong friendship. The moniker of "The Big O" would eventually follow him back to the States, where it became an unofficial nickname for Orbison.
Touring in 1963 took a toll on Orbison's personal life. His wife Claudette began having an affair with the contractor who built their home in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Their friends and relatives attributed it to her youth and that she was unable to withstand being alone and bored; when Orbison toured England again in the fall of 1963, she joined him.
He was immensely popular where he went, finishing the tour in Ireland and Canada. Almost immediately he toured Australia and New Zealand with The Beach Boys and returned again to the UK and Ireland where he was so besieged by teenage girls that the Irish police had to halt his performances to pull the girls off him.
He continued to tour, however, and visited Australia again, this time with The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger later remarked of a snapshot he took of Orbison in New Zealand: "A fine figure of a man in the hot springs, he was."
Orbison also began collaborating with Bill Dees, whom he had known in Texas. With Dees, he wrote "It's Over", a No. 1 in the UK, and a song that would be one of his signature pieces for the rest of his career. When Claudette walked in while Dees and Orbison had begun writing to say she was heading for Nashville, Orbison asked if she had any money, and Dees said "Pretty woman never needs any money."
Forty minutes later, Oh, Pretty Woman was completed. A riff-laden masterpiece that employed a playful growl he got from a Bob Hope movie, the epithet Orbison uttered when he was unable to hit a note ("Mercy!"), and a merging of his vulnerable and masculine sides, it rose to No. 1 in the fall of 1964 in the U.S. and stayed on the charts for 14 weeks; it hit No. 1 in the UK as well, spending 18 weeks total on the charts. The single sold over seven million copies.
Orbison's success was greater in Britain; as Billboard magazine noted, "In a 68-week period that began on August 8, 1963, Roy Orbison was the only American artist to have a number-one single in Britain. He did it twice, with 'It's Over' on June 25, 1964, and 'Oh, Pretty Woman' on October 8, 1964. The latter song also went to number one in America, making Orbison impervious to the current chart dominance of British artists on both sides of the Atlantic."
"Oh, Pretty Woman" proved the pinnacle of Orbison's career in the 1960s. Following its release, he endured some upheavals. He and Claudette divorced in November 1964 over her infidelities, though they remarried in August 1965. Wesley Rose, who was acting as Orbison's agent, moved him from Monument Records to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), for a million dollars and the understanding that Orbison would expand into television and films as Elvis Presley had done. Orbison was a film enthusiast, and when not touring, writing, or recording would dedicate time to seeing up to three films a day.
However, Rose also began acting as Orbison's producer. Fred Foster later argued that Rose's takeover was responsible for the commercial failure of Orbison's work at MGM. His first collection at MGM, an album titled Goodnight, sold fewer than 200,000 copies.
The British Invasion also occurred at the same time, changing the direction of rock music significantly.
While on tour again in the UK in 1965, Orbison broke his foot falling off a motorcycle in front of thousands of screaming fans at a race track, and performed his show that evening in a cast. His reconciliation with Claudette occurred when she went to see if he was recuperating after his accident.
Orbison was fascinated with machines and vehicles, and was known to see a car he liked, follow the driver and offer him money to purchase the car on the spot.
He had a collection worthy of a museum by the late 1960s. He and Claudette shared a love for motorcycles; she had grown up around them, but Orbison claimed Elvis Presley had introduced him to motorcycles.
However, tragedy struck on June 6, 1966, when Orbison and Claudette were riding home from Bristol, Tennessee. Claudette was struck by a semi-trailer truck and died instantly.
A grieving Orbison threw himself into his work, collaborating with Bill Dees to write music for a film that MGM had scheduled for him to star in as well. It was initially planned as a dramatic Western, but was rewritten as a comedy.
Orbison's character was a spy who stole and had to protect and deliver a cache of gold to the Confederate Army during the U.S. Civil War and was outfitted with a guitar that turned into a rifle. The prop allowed him to deliver the line "I'll kill you and play your funeral march at the same time," with -- according to biographer Colin Escott—"zero conviction."
Titled The Fastest Guitar Alive, Orbison was pleased with the film, although it proved to be a critical and box office flop. While MGM had included five films in his contract, no more were made.
Orbison recorded an album dedicated to the songs of Don Gibson and another of Hank Williams covers, but both sold poorly. As the psychedelic rock movement took hold in the late 1960s, Orbison felt lost, later saying " didn't hear a lot I could relate to so I kind of stood there like a tree where the winds blow and the seasons change, and you're still there and you bloom again."
He continued to tour, and had previously made some smart real estate investments, so money was never an issue for him again. It was during a tour in the Midlands of England that on September 16, 1968 Orbison received the news that his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee had burned down and his two eldest sons had died.
The property was sold to Johnny Cash, who planted an orchard on it. On March 25, 1969, Orbison married a German teenager named Barbara Wilhonnen Jacobs whom he had met a few days before his sons died.
His youngest son with Claudette was raised by his parents. He and Barbara had a son in 1970 and another in 1974.
Orbison recorded in the 1970s, but his albums performed so poorly that he began to doubt his talents.
Author Peter Lehman would later observe his absence was a part of the mystery of his persona: "Since it was never clear where he had come from, no one seemed to pay much mind to where he had gone; he was just gone."
His influence was apparent, however, as several artists released covers of his songs that performed very well. "Love Hurts" was remade by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, and again by heavy metal band Nazareth. Sonny James sent "Only the Lonely" to No. 1 on the country music charts.
Bruce Springsteen ended his concerts with Orbison songs and Glen Campbell had a minor hit with a remake of "Dream Baby". A compilation LP of Orbison's greatest hits went to No. 1 in the UK in 1977. The same year he began to open concerts for The Eagles, who started as Linda Ronstadt's backup band. Ronstadt herself covered "Blue Bayou" in 1977, her cover reaching No. 3 on the Billboard charts and remaining in the charts for 24 weeks. Orbison credited this cover in particular for reviving his memory in the popular mind, if not his career.
Around the same time Orbison underwent open heart surgery. He had suffered from duodenal ulcers as far back as 1960, and had been a chain smoker since adolescence.
Although he felt revitalized following the triple bypass, he continued to smoke and his weight fluctuated for the rest of his life.
Don McLean covered "Crying" in 1980 in a version which hit No. 5 in the U.S. and stayed on the charts for 15 weeks; it was No. 1 in the UK for three.
Although he was all but forgotten in the U.S., Orbison took a chance and embarked on a tour of Bulgaria. He was astonished to find he was as popular there as he had been in 1964; he was forced to stay in his hotel room because he was mobbed on the streets of Sofia.[62] Later that year, he and Emmylou Harris won a Grammy for their duet "That Lovin' You Feelin' Again". It was his first such award, and he felt more than ever that the time was ripe for his full return to popular music.
However, it would be several more years until this came to fruition.
Orbison's career was fully revived in 1987. He released an album of his re-recorded hits titled In Dreams: The Greatest Hits. A song he recorded named "Life Fades Away" was featured in the film Less Than Zero. He and k. d. lang performed a duet of "Crying" and released it on the soundtrack to Hiding Out, winning a Grammy for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals.
However, one film in which Orbison refused to allow his music was Blue Velvet. Director David Lynch asked to use In Dreams and Orbison turned him down.
Lynch used it anyway. The song served as one of several obsessions of a psychopathic character named Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). It was lip-synched by an effeminate drug dealer played by Dean Stockwell, after which Booth demanded the song be played over and over, once beating the protagonist while the song played. During filming, Lynch asked for the song to be played repeatedly to give the set a surreal atmosphere.
Orbison was initially shocked at its use: he saw the film in a theater in Malibu and later said, "I was mortified because they were talking about the 'candy colored clown' in relation to a dope deal... I thought, 'What in the world...?' But later, when I was touring, we got the video out and I really got to appreciate what David gave to the song, and what the song gave to the movie — how it achieved this otherworldly quality that added a whole new dimension to 'In Dreams'."
The same year, Orbison was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and initiated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bruce Springsteen, who concluded his speech with a reference to his own song "Thunder Road": "I wanted a record with words like Bob Dylan that sounded like Phil Spector — but, most of all, I wanted to sing like Roy Orbison. Now everyone knows that no one sings like Roy Orbison."
In response, Orbison asked Springsteen for a copy of the speech, and said of his induction that he felt "validated" by the honor.
A few months later, Orbison and Springsteen paired again to film a concert at the Coconut Grove Ballroom in Los Angeles. They were joined by Jackson Browne, T-Bone Burnett, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Jennifer Warnes, and k. d. lang. lang later recounted how humbled Orbison had been by the show of support from so many talented and busy musicians: "Roy looked at all of us and said, 'If there is anything I can ever do for you, please call on me.' He was very serious. It was his way of thanking us. It was very emotional."
The concert was filmed in one take and aired on Cinemax under the title Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night; it was released on video by Virgin Records, selling 50,000 copies.
In 1987, Orbison had begun collaborating with Electric Light Orchestra frontman Jeff Lynne on a new album. At the same time Lynne was completing production work on George Harrison's Cloud Nine, and all three had lunch one day when Orbison accepted an invitation to sing on Harrison's album. They contacted Bob Dylan, who allowed them to use a recording studio in his home. Along the way, Harrison had to stop by Tom Petty's house to pick up his guitar; Petty and his band had backed Dylan on his last tour.
By that evening, the group had written "Handle with Care", which led to the concept of recording an entire album. They called themselves the Traveling Wilburys, representing themselves as half-brothers from the same father. They gave themselves stage names; Orbison chose his from his musical hero, calling himself "Lefty Wilbury" after Lefty Frizzell.
Expanding on the concept of a traveling band of raucous musicians, Orbison offered a quote about the group's foundation in honor: "Some people say Daddy was a cad and a bounder. I remember him as a Baptist minister."
Lynne later spoke of the recording sessions: "Everybody just sat there going, 'Wow, it's Roy Orbison!'... [E]ven though he's become your pal and you're hanging out and having a laugh and going to dinner, as soon as he gets behind that mike and he's doing his business, suddenly it's shudder time."
Orbison was given one solo track on the album titled "Not Alone Anymore". His contributions were highly praised by the press. Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 spent 53 weeks on the U.S. charts, peaking at No. 3. It hit No. 1 in Australia and topped out at No. 16 in the UK. The LP won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group.
Orbison was in high demand for concerts and interviews once again, and was thrilled about it. He began writing songs and collaborating with many musicians from his past and newer fans to develop a solo album titled Mystery Girl. U2's lead singer Bono had become aware of Orbison when he saw Blue Velvet and, with The Edge wrote "She's a Mystery to Me" for him.
Bono witnessed the recording of the song and recalled:
I stood beside him and sang with him. He didn't seem to be singing. So I thought, 'He'll sing it the next take. He's just reading the words.' And then we went in to listen to the take, and there was this voice, which was the loudest whisper I've ever heard. He had been singing it. But he hardly moved his lips. And the voice was louder than the band in its own way. I don't know how he did that. It was like sleight of hand.
Mystery Girl was produced by Jeff Lynne, whom Orbison considered the best producer he had ever worked with, while Bono, Elvis Costello, Orbison's son Wesley and others offered their songs to him. The biggest hit from the album was "You Got It", written by Lynne and Tom Petty. It posthumously rose to No. 9 in the U.S. and No. 3 in the UK
While Orbison determinedly pursued his second chance at stardom, he reacted to his success in constant surprise, confessing "It's very nice to be wanted again, but I still can't quite believe it."
He lost some weight to fit his new image and the constant demand of touring, as well as the newer demands of making videos. In November 1988 Mystery Girl was completed and Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 was rising up the charts. Orbison went to Europe where he was presented with an award and played a show in Antwerp where footage for the video for "You Got It" was filmed.
He gave multiple interviews a day in a hectic schedule. A few days later a manager at a club in Boston was concerned that he looked ill, but Orbison played the show to another standing ovation.
Finally, exhausted, he returned to his home in Hendersonville to rest for a few days before flying again to London to film two more videos for the Traveling Wilburys. On December 6, 1988, he spent the day flying model airplanes with his sons. After having dinner at his mother's home in Tennessee, Orbison died of a heart attack.
Orbison's death was an international news event. Author Peter Lehman suggests that had he died in the 1970s when his career was in the doldrums, it might have earned a minor mention in the obituary section of the newspaper.
However, the response to his death reflected just how popular Orbison had again become. The Nashville Banner put it on the front page across six columns. It also made the front page of the New York Times. The tabloid The National Enquirer suggested on its cover that he had worked himself to death. A memorial was held in Nashville, and another in Los Angeles; he was buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.
In January 1989 Orbison became the first musician since Elvis Presley to have two albums in the Top Five at the same time.
Although Orbison is counted as a rock and roll pioneer, and has been cited by numerous critics as one of the genre's most influential musicians, his style was noted for how it departed from the norm. Rock and roll in the 1950s was defined by a driving backbeat, heavy guitars, and lyrical themes that glorified youthful rebellion.
However, very little of what Orbison recorded met these characteristics. The structure and themes of his songs defied convention, and his much-praised voice and performance style were unlike any other in rock and roll. Many of his contemporaries compared his music with that of classically trained musicians, although Orbison never mentioned any classical music influences.
U2 frontman Bono holds Orbison as a standard in musical creativity, commenting in 1999, "The thing people don't talk about enough as far as I'm concerned is how innovative this music was, how radical in terms of its songwriting. As I become more interested in songwriting, you hit a wall where Roy Orbison is standing."
Bob Dylan highlighted Orbison's song structures in his book Chronicles: Volume One, specifically noting how they were "songs within songs."
Orbison's music, like the man himself, has been described as timeless, diverting from contemporary rock and roll and bordering on the eccentric, within a hair's breadth of being weird.
New York Times writer Peter Watrous declared in a concert review: "He has perfected an odd vision of popular music, one in which eccentricity and imagination beat back all the pressures toward conformity."
In the 1960s, Orbison refused to splice edits of songs together, and insisted in recording them in single takes with all the instruments and singers together.
The only convention Orbison followed in his most popular songs is the time limit for radio fare in pop songs. Otherwise, each seems to follow a separate structure. Using rhyme schemes for verses and choruses, normal pop songs followed the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus structure. Where A represents the first verse and B represents the chorus, most pop songs can be represented by A-B-A-B-C-A-B, like "Ooby Dooby" and "Claudette". Orbison's "In Dreams" was a song in seven movements that can be represented as Intro-A-B-C-D-E-F; no sections are repeated. In "Running Scared", however, the entire song repeats to build suspense to a final climax, to be represented as A-A-A-A-B. "Crying" is more complex, changing parts toward the end to be represented as A-B-C-D-E-F-A-B modified, C modified, D modified, E modified, F modified.
Although Orbison recorded and wrote standard structure songs before "Only the Lonely", he claimed never to have learned how to write them:
"I'm sure we had to study composition or something like that at school, and they'd say 'This is the way you do it,' and that's the way I would have done it, so being blessed again with not knowing what was wrong or what was right, I went on my own way....So the structure sometimes has the chorus at the end of the song, and sometimes there is no chorus, it just goes...But that's always after the fact—as I'm writing, it all sounds natural and in sequence to me."
Elton John's writing partner Bernie Taupin wrote that Orbison's songs always made "radical left turns", and k. d. lang declared that good songwriting comes from being constantly surprised, such as how the entirety of "Running Scared" eventually depends on the final note, one word.
Some of the musicians who worked with Orbison were confounded by what he asked them to do. Session guitarist Jerry Kennedy stated, "Roy went against the grain. The first time you'd hear something, it wouldn't sound right. But after a few playbacks, it would start to grow on you."
Critic Dave Marsh categorizes Orbison's ballads into themes reflecting pain and loss, and dreaming. A third category is his uptempo rockabilly songs such as "Go! Go! Go!" and "Mean Woman Blues" that are more thematically simple, addressing his feelings and intentions in a masculine braggadocio. In concert, Orbison placed the uptempo songs between the ballads to keep from being too consistently dark or grim.
In 1990, Colin Escott wrote an introduction to Orbison's biography published in a CD box set: "Orbison was the master of compression. Working the singles era, he could relate a short story, or establish a mood in under three minutes. If you think that's easy — try it. His greatest recordings were quite simply perfect; not a word or note surplus to intention."
After attending a show in 1988, Peter Watrous of The New York Times wrote that Orbison's songs are "dreamlike claustrophobically intimate set pieces."
As a youth, Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant began an appreciation of American R&B music, but beyond the black musicians, he cited Elvis and Orbison especially as foreshadowing the emotions he would experience: "The poignancy of the combination of lyric and voice was stunning. He used drama to great effect and he wrote dramatically."
The loneliness in Orbison's songs that he became most famous for, he both explained and downplayed: "I don't think I've been any more lonely than anyone else... Although if you grow up in West Texas, there are a lot of ways to be lonely."
His music offered an alternative to the postured masculinity that was pervasive in music and culture. Robin Gibb of The Bee Gees stated, "He made emotion fashionable, that it was all right to talk about and sing about very emotional things. For men to sing about very emotional things... Before that no one would do it."
Orbison acknowledged this in looking back on the era in which he became popular: "When ["Crying"] came out I don't think anyone had accepted the fact that a man should cry when he wants to cry."
Peter Lehman, on the other hand, considered Orbison's theme of constant vulnerability an element of sexual masochism.
Orbison admitted that he did not think his voice was put to appropriate use until "Only the Lonely" in 1960, when it was able, in his words, to allow its "flowering."
Carl Perkins, however, toured with Orbison while they were both signed with Sun Records and recalled a specific concert when Orbison covered the Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald standard "Indian Love Call", and had the audience completely silenced, in awe.
Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel both commented on the otherworldly quality of Orbison's voice; a particularly poetic comparison was Dwight Yoakam's, who stated that Orbison's voice sounded like "the cry of an angel falling backward through an open window."
Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees went further to say that when he heard "Crying" for the first time, "That was it. To me that was the voice of God."
Bob Dylan marked Orbison as a specific influence, remarking that there was nothing like him on radio in the early 1960's:
With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes.
With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop. [After "Ooby Dooby"] (h)e was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal... His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttering to yourself something like, 'Man, I don't believe it.'
Likewise, Tim Goodwin, who conducted the orchestra that backed Orbison in Bulgaria, had been told that Orbison's voice would be a singular experience to hear. When Orbison started with "Crying" and hit the high notes, Goodwin stated, "The strings were playing and the band had built up, and sure enough, the hair on the back of my neck just all started standing up. It was an incredible physical sensation."
Orbison's severe stage fright was particularly noticeable in the 1970's and early 1980's. During the first few songs in a concert, the vibrato in his voice was almost uncontrollable, but afterwards, it became stronger and more dependable.
This also happened with age. Orbison noticed that he was unable to control the tremor in the late afternoon and evenings, and chose to record in the mornings when it was possible.
Orbison often excused his motionless performances by saying that his songs did not allow instrumental sections so he could move or dance on stage, although songs like "Mean Woman Blues" did offer that.
He was aware of his unique performance style even in the early 1960s when he commented, "I'm not a super personality—on stage or off. I mean, you could put workers like Chubby Checker or Bobby Rydell in second-rate shows and they'd still shine through, but not me. I'd have to be prepared. People come to hear my music, my songs. That's what I have to give them."
k. d. lang compared Orbison to a tree, with passive but solid beauty.
This image of Orbison as immovable was so associated with him it was parodied by John Belushi on Saturday Night Live, as Belushi dressed as Orbison falls over while singing "Oh, Pretty Woman", and continues to play as his bandmates set him upright again.
However, lang quantified this style by saying, "It's so hard to explain what Roy's energy was like because he would fill a room with his energy and presence but not say a word. Being that he was so grounded and so strong and so gentle and quiet. He was just there."
Orbison attributed his own passion during his performances to the period when he grew up in Fort Worth while the U.S. was mobilizing for World War II. His parents worked in a defense plant and his father would bring a guitar in the evenings and their friends and relatives who had just joined the military would gather, and drink and sing heartily. Orbison later reflected, "I guess that level of intensity made a big impression on me, because it's still there. That sense of 'do it for all it's worth and do it now and do it good.' Not to analyze it too much, but I think the verve and gusto that everybody felt and portrayed around me has stayed with me all this time.
Mark Alburger (b. 1957, Upper Darby, PA) is an award-winning, eclectic ASCAP composer of postminimal, postpopular, and postcomedic sensibilities. He is Music Director of San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and San Francisco Cabaret Opera, Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music and New Music, and Professor Emeritus in Music Theory and Literature at Diablo Valley College. His principal teachers were Gerald Levinson, Joan Panetti, and James Freeman at Swarthmore College (B.A.); Jules Langert at Dominican University (M.A.); Christopher Yavelow at Claremont University (Ph.D.); and Terry Riley. Dr. Alburger has composed 406 major works over the past 48 years, including chamber music, concertos, oratorios, operas, song cycles, and symphonies. His complete catalogue is being issued on discs from New Music. Alburger's multiple blogs include: markalburger.blogspot.com,
markalburger2022.blogspot.com,
markalburgerworks.blogspot.com, markalburgerevents.blogspot.com, markalburgermusichistory.blogspot.
com, 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com
