ROY ORBISON 1936 to 1989
Born in Vernon Texas, Roy’s first big hit came in 1960 with “Only The Lonely “.
His biggest hit “Pretty Woman“ charted at number one in 1964 selling seven million copies world wide, only to be reborn in the 1990 motion picture hit Pretty Woman.
Roy who was affectionately known as the “Big O“ had many other hits including; “It’s Over“, “Working For The Man“, “Pretty Paper“, “Blue Angel“ and “Blue Bayou“. His run of hits saw Monument Records sign him in 1965 as one of the first artists to get a million dollar record deal.
With his first wife Claudette being killed in a motorbike accident in 1966 just after their remarriage and his two eldest sons passing away in a house fire a couple of years later, these family tragedies saw Roy lose interest in song writing.
Thus with the arrival of the seventies came a decline in his popularity which remained until the middle of the eighties when the Travelling Wilburys were formed and caused his career again to flourish, and it kept going until he died of a heart attack in 1989 aged 52 years.
