The success and tragedy and the beautiful sadness of........ONLY THE LONELY Written by Roy and Joe Melson. (Offered to Elvis and the Everleys) Who both turned it down. Roy Kelton Orbison was born on April 23, 1936, in Vernon, Texas. A year before Beatlemania overtook the United States in 1964, the four lads from Liverpool invited Orbison to open for them on their English tour. On his first night, Orbison performed 14 encores before the Beatles even made it on stage. After Orbison landed a record deal with the Nashville-based label Monument in 1960. He began perfecting the sound that would define his career. His big break came after he tried to pitch his composition Only the Lonely to both Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers, and was turned down by both. Deciding to record the song himself, Orbison used his vibrato voice and operatic style to create a recording unlike anything Americans had heard at the time. Reaching as high the No. 2 spot on the Billboard singles chart, Only the Lonely has since been deemed a pivotal force in the development of rock music. Roy Orbison came into RCAs Nashville studio for his second session accompanied by two sidekicks. As he rehearsed his new song at the microphone, the friends whispered alongside him. Engineer Bob Porter and producer Fred Foster said it was impossible to record him that way. Well, said Roy, youd better, because thats the sound of my next record. What they were singing, of course, was Dum, dum, dum, dum-dee-doo-wah; ooo, yay, yay, yay, yeah; oh, oh, oh, oo-wah; only the lonely. These nonsense syllables arent sung or hummed or crooned; theyre whispered into our hearts. Roy Orbisons life was filled with personal tragedies. His first wife, Claudette (Frady), died in a 1966 motorcycle accident. (The Everly Brothers hit Claudette had been written about her, by Roy.) Two years later, the family home at Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville, Tennessee burned to the ground while Roy was touring in England, and two of his three young sons, Anthony and Roy Jr., died in the fire. The youngest boy, Wesley, at the time only three, was saved by Roys parents. These events affected him profoundly but after a few years he would continue to play to loyal audiences all across the globe. Tragedy would strike again, when, in 1973, Orbisons elder brother Grady Lee Orbison, died in a motor vehicle accident in Henderson, Tennessee when on his way to visit Roy for Thanksgiving. At the age of 52, Orbison suffered a massive heart attack and died while visiting at his mothers home in Hendersonville a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee on December 6, 1988 before his last album Mystery Girl could be released. Both the album and the single from it, You Got It, were hits, and are generally regarded as Orbisons best work since his success of the 1950s and 1960s. He was the posthumous winner of the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance and in 1992, the popular I Drove All Night and Heartbreak Radio appeared on the posthumous album, King Of Hearts, produced by Jeff Lynne. Roy Orbison is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California. His two sons and their mother, Claudette, who predeceased him, were laid to rest in the Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Nashville, Tennessee.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 21:54:11 +0000
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