Roy Orbison facts: Singer’s wife, children, songs and why he always wore glasses explained

Roy Orbison was one of the rock and roll’s most popular and successful artists ever.

Thanks to his trademark passionate vocal style, dark ballads and distinctive sunglasses, he was a hugely influential singer and composer.

Roy Orbison’s music has been described as operatic, giving him the nicknames ‘the Caruso of Rock’ and ‘the Big O’.

He was one of the first male rock and roll stars to show vulny. He was also known for his shyness and stage fright, which he attempted to battle by werability at a time when it was the norm to project strong masculinitearing dark sunglasses.

Roy started out as a rockabilly and country-and-western singer, and he soon found success in the early 1960s with hits including ‘Only the Lonely’, ‘Running Scared’, ‘Crying’, ‘In Dreams’ and ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’.

Due to a number of personal tragedies, his career nosedived. However, he found new popularity in the 1980s thanks to successful cover versions of his songs.

In 1988, he co-founded the Traveling Wilburys with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne, and a new album of songs – such as 1989’s ‘You Got It’ – proved to be very successful, even after his death.

1. He was the middle son of parents Orbie Lee Orbison (1913–1984), an oil well driller and car mechanic, and nurse Nadine Vesta Shults (1913-1992).

2. Why did Roy Orbison wear dark sunglasses?

3. It was said that all the Orbison children had poor eyesight growing up.

   Roy used thick corrective lenses from an early age, and was self-conscious about his appearance. He began dyeing his almost-white hair black when he was still a young boy.

   

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   He was known to be quiet, self-effacing, and was also very polite.

   After leaving his normal thick eyeglasses on an aeroplane in 1963, while on tour with the Beatles, Roy was forced to wear his prescription Wayfarer sunglasses on stage, and found that he actually preferred them.

   He wore sunglasses to help him hide to an extent, according to his biographers. The sunglasses led some people to assume he was blind.

   In November 1988, his album Mystery Girl was completed, and the Traveling Wilburys’ first album was a success.

   He had told Johnny Cash that he was experiencing chest pains. He travelled to Europe to receive an award, and played a show in Antwerp.

   A few days later, a manager at a club in Boston was worried about Orbison’s health, but the singer completed his gig.

   He performed at the Front Row Theater in Ohio, on December 4. He then returned home in Hendersonville to rest for a few days before flying to London to film two more videos.

   On December 6, 1988, he flew model airplanes with his sons and had dinner at his mother’s home. Later that day, he died of a heart attack, at the age of 52.