Sounds of the 60′s: Roy Orbison-Only the Lonely

As posted on Carl Hoffman’s The 60′s Official site 

Roy Orbison was born in Vernon, Texas, the middle son of Orbie Lee Orbison, an oil well driller and car mechanic, and Nadine Shults, 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”, 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 was nearly blind and 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 compliant—an homage, biographer Alan Clayson wrote, to his Southern upbringing.

However, Orbison was readily available to sing, and often became the focus of attention when he did. He remembered that he considered his voice memorable if not great.

At the age of six, Orbison was given a guitar by his father for his birthday; by seven, Orbison stated, “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 pickup 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 his 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 to work in the oil fields to fall back on if music did not pay. Orbison formed another band called The Teen Kings and sang at night while working in the oil fields or studying during the day.

Orbison watched his classmate Pat Boone get signed for a record deal, further strengthening his resolve to become a professional musician. His geology grades dropped so he switched to Odessa Junior College to consider becoming a teacher.

While living in Odessa, Orbison drove 355 miles to Dallas to see and be stunned by the onstage antics of Elvis Presley. 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 legends Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Cash. Phillips told him curtly, “Johnny Cash doesn’t run my record company!” but 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.

Phillips 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”, which centered mostly on rockabilly standard elements. The band split apart during a Sun Records rehearsal, ultimately over 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…..

Read more at The 60′s Official Site

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Tags: boomers, life after 60, Roy Orbison. music, the sixties decade

This entry was posted on 11/05/2009 at 22:45 and is filed under Life After Sixty.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.