Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist whose distinctive voice and emotional ballads made him the top-selling American artist of the early 1960s. Born in Texas, he was performing country and western songs in a band by his teens, and in 1956 Sam Phillips signed him to Sun Records, where he made Ooby Dooby. Greater success came at Monument Records: from 1960 to 1966, 22 of his singles reached the Billboard top 40, and he wrote or co-wrote nearly all of his top-10 hits, among them Only the Lonely (1960), Running Scared (1961), Crying (1961), In Dreams (1963) and Oh, Pretty Woman (1964). After his career faltered in the mid-1960s, he returned to prominence in the late 1980s, when he helped found the Traveling Wilburys. His honors included a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a 1987 entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He died in 1988.