Date of Birth 23 April 1936, Vernon, Texas

Date of Death 6 December 1988, Madison, Tennessee (heart attack)

Birth Name Roy Kelton Orbison

Nickname The Big O, The Voice

Height 5' 11"

Spouses

Barbara Orbison (25 March 1969 - 6 December 1988) (his death) 2 children

Claudette Frady (September 1957 - 6 June 1966) (her death) 3 children

Trade Mark

dark glasses

Flawless tenor voice with an unmistakable vibrato.

"The Big O," was an influential American singer-songwriter, guitarist and a pioneer of rock and roll whose recording career spanned more than four decades. By the mid-1960s Orbison was internationally recognized for his ballads of lost love, rhythmically advanced melodies, characteristic dark sunglasses, and his taut, powerful alto voice coupled with his occasional distinctive usage of falsetto, typified in songs such as "Ooby Dooby," "Only The Lonely," "In Dreams," "Oh, Pretty Woman," "Crying," "Running Scared," and "You Got It." Elvis Presley once said Orbison had the best singing voice he'd ever heard. In 1987 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and posthumously in 1989 into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Two misconceptions about Orbison's appearance continue to surface: that he was an albino, and that he wore his trademark dark glasses because he was blind or nearly so. Neither is correct, though his poor vision required him to wear thick corrective lenses. From childhood he suffered from a combination of hyperopia, severe astigmatism, anisometropia, and strabismus.Orbison's trademark sunglasses were a fashion statement.