Roy Kelton Orbison was born on 23^rd April 1936 in Vernon, Texas. He learned to play guitar at the age of six; he was performing on local radio shows at the age of eight and by the time he was ten year old, had his first paying job in a medicine show. In 1952, at the age of thirteen, he formed his first band, the Wink Westeners. After graduating form high school, he worked in the oil fields playing music at night. Later he went to college to study geology as a back-up, in case his music career failed.

While at North Texas State College, he and his roommates formed a new group called the Teen Kings. They got their own local television show and in 1955 Johnny Cash appeared on the show. It was Cash who urged them to record for Sun Records. They made their first recordings for Sun Records in 1956 and had a small national hit with their first single, Ooby Dooby. The group soon disbanded, and Orbison remained under contract to Sun as a solo artist. Future hits eluded him who was far more comfortable as a ballad singer than rockabilly singer.

By the late Fifties, Orbison had moved to Nashville where he began concentrating on building a career as a songwriter. His biggest early success was a song called Claudette, which was recorded by the Everly Brothers. Orbison resumed his solo career and signed with Monument Records in 1960. Then came the hits, starting with a number two hit  with a song he originally wrote for the Everly Brothers called Only the Lonely. Between 1960 and 1963, Orbison would have fifteen Top Forty hits for Monument, including Blue Angel, I'm Hurtin', Candy Man, and Mean Woman Blues.

Orbison was also a smash success in the UK, where in 1963 he toured with the Beatles. In fact, his biggest and best hit was Oh, Pretty Woman, which soared to number one in late 1964, at the peak of the British Invasion. His fortunes declined rapidly after he left Monument for MGM in 1965 and he was also beset by personal tragedies (his wife and two sons were killed in separate accidents) which left him at a low ebb. He continued to perform and record with some success over the next two decades. He was on the brink of a major solo comeback when he died suddenly  from a heart attack on 6^th December 1988.

Roy Orbison was inducted in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.