Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison’s first big hit was “Only the Lonely,” a song that reached No. 2 on the US Billboard charts, and No. 1 in the UK, and that the magazine Rolling Stone declared one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in its 2004 listing (#232). Orbison co-wrote “Only the Lonely” with his partner, and fellow Texan, Joe Melson.

Orbison then had a string of hits lasting until “Oh, Pretty Woman” in 1964, (which would become #222 on that Rolling Stones’ list), then he gradually faded from the public eye. As Peter Lehman has written, if he had died in the 1970s, the death would have received but little attention and that only from the big city newspapers. But he lived long enough to see a revival of interest in his work, and to become a member of the Super-Group known as the Travelling Wilburys, with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne.