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Roy Orbison

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Roy Orbison was an American singer, writer and guitarist, born in 1936 in Vernon, Texas. He was given a guitar by his father at the age of six and grew up with country music and western swing. As a teenager he sang in a country band. In 1956, at the urging of Johnny Cash, he signed with Sam Phillips's Sun Records, where his first recording, Ooby Dooby, sounded like the early recordings of Elvis Presley. His greatest success came at Monument Records. Between 1960 and 1966 twenty-two of his singles reached the American top forty.

Music and breakthrough

He wrote or co-wrote almost all his big hits, such as Only the Lonely in 1960, Running Scared and Crying in 1961, In Dreams in 1963 and Oh, Pretty Woman in 1964. His songs have intricate structures and dramatic ballads, with a powerful, high voice. He performed almost without movement, in black clothes, with dyed black hair and dark sunglasses. After the mid-1960s his career stalled because of personal tragedies, but he came back in the late 1980s. In 1988 he was a co-founder of the Traveling Wilburys, with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne. He died in December of that year.

Influence

Orbison let vulnerability be heard at a time when male singers mainly wanted to seem strong. In School of Rock he appears as an example of the slow style in which John Lennon at first wrote Please Please Me.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Only the Lonely and notice how the voice glides from low to high, and how the song becomes more and more tense. What does the singing do to the emotion?

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

Mentioned in other articles

See also

Categories: Artists