Why does roy orbison wear black

Black in this sense is a barrier behind which a man hides — from the law, from lawbreakers, from tough guys, from women, from prying eyes, from public scrutiny, from whatever threatens from without. Here's the part that almost no one remembers: Orbison actually had almost all of his hits before adopting the shades, which came along relatively late in his shelf life as a pop hitmaker.

When he had his first minor hit in with Sun Records' release of "Ooby Dooby," he was wearing no glasses at all in public —although he desperately needed them — and had un-striking brown hair. By the early '60s, when he was having his biggest hits on the Monument label, his hair had become jet-black, and, in a nod to his visual needs, he was wearing black plastic frames to match, but the lenses were still clear.

At that point, Buddy Holly had made specs acceptable, but Monument was still choosing to more or less hide Orbison by not including his photos or burying small ones on the back cover on the albums that bore his biggest successes.

When his photo was included, he was smiling and wearing a V-neck sweater that was at odds with his soon-to-be-adopted dark look. After that tour with the Beatles, though, there was no looking back to the sweet brainiac look. Even in the world of '30s and '40s African American jazz, where sunglasses were a common accouterment, no musician was known for wearing them virtually all the time in public. There was one exception: In , Orbison doffed the shades to star in a major motion picture, a Western called The Fastest Guitar Alive that is remembered as one of the greatest pop-star-to-movie-star miscalculations that side of Cold as Ice.

He had about as many Ray-Ban-free public moments after that as he did starring film roles. The singer's life was beset by tragedy in the late '60s, and that's not even including the flop movie. His first wife, Claudette, died in a motorcycle accident while riding alongside him in Two years later, his Nashville home burned down, killing two of his three children.

Later in his career, it was easy to conflate these events and imagine that he'd adopted the dark look as a reaction to the deaths, though he really adopted the image a few years before.

In any case, his life picked up again in , when he wed Barbara Orbison, a striking beauty who would be the keeper of his flame for decades after his death. The unshakability of his image made for some affectionate ribbing. In the late '70s, on "Saturday Night Live," Belushi played Orbison in a sketch where his fictional wife ripped off his sunglasses, only to find another pair underneath, and then another.

The skit ended with Belushi-as-Orbison being so stiff in performance that he plopped over like a board while singing, only to be lifted back up by band members as he continued the song.

That stiffness made him hep at a time when every other post-Elvis rocker flirted with seeming to try too hard. Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees commented on "the mystery" that was reinforced by a guy who not only dressed in black but "wasn't moving his body around — he was just singing from his heart.

In a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech in , Springsteen rhapsodized about the impact that winning an opening slot for Orbison had on him.

Springsteen never did learn to stand still like Orbison, but maybe that's a reticence that's born, not learned. Dorothy Wolf, the curator of the one-room Roy Orbison Museum in his hometown of Wink, Texas, remembered Orbison both for his staidness and his poor eyesight.

He was really blind. So they weren't much better off. The highlight, Kelso says, is the ability to try on a pair of the star's actual prescription sunglasses, and have the curator take a photo of you in them, which she then tacks to the wall alongside hundreds of other tourists. But if you really squint while you're trying on his old shades, maybe you can just imagine yourself in a deeply, deeply blue bayou. A former NBA player has issued an apology after his daughter was seen at a youth basketball game in Orange County throwing a vicious sucker punch that left another girl with a concussion.

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The emerald cut diamond was inspired by classic Art Nouveau aesthetics and the vaulted glass ceiling of the Grand Palais. In 27 years of criminal law practice, I've never seen a trial judge tell a jury to applaud a defense witness right before they take the stand. Read full article. More content below. Roy Orbison. After Orbison landed a record deal with the Nashville-based label Monument in , he began perfecting the sound that would define his career.

His big break came after he tried to pitch his composition "Only the Lonely" to both Presley and the Everly Brothers, and was turned down by both. Deciding to record the song himself, Orbison used his vibrato voice and operatic style to create a recording unlike anything Americans had heard at the time. Reaching as high the No. Between and , Orbison recorded nine Top 10 hits and another ten that broke into the Top When it came to composition, Orbison called himself "blessed But that's always after the fact—as I'm writing, it all sounds natural and in sequence to me.

As distinctive as his three-octave voice and unorthodox songwriting technique was Orbison's unglamorous style, which some have described as "geek chic. On a fateful day during his tour with the Beatles, Orbison left his glasses on the plane before a show, which forced him to wear his unsightly prescription sunglasses for that night's show.

Although he considered the incident "embarrassing," the look became an instant trademark. Orbison's unhip underdog look suited his music well, as his lyrics were marked by incredible vulnerability. At a time when rock music went hand-in-hand with confidence and machismo, Orbison dared to sing about insecurity, heartache and fear. His stage persona, which has been described as borderline masochistic, went a long way toward challenging the traditional ideal of aggressive masculinity in rock 'n' roll.

Although the first half of the s saw the rise of Orbison's star, the second half of the decade brought harder times. Tragedy struck when Orbison's wife, Claudette, was killed in a motorcycle accident in , and again when his two oldest sons died in a house fire in Following those incidents, a devastated Orbison failed to generate many hits—and with the rise of the psychedelic movement in rock 'n' roll, the market for rockabilly had all but dried up anyway.

Peter Lehman, director of the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities at Arizona State University, said about that period, "I was living in New York between and , and even in Manhattan I could not find a record store that bothered to stock one copy of a newly released Orbison album; I had to special order them. Orbison returned to his musical career in , however, when the Eagles invited him to join them on their "Hotel California" tour. That same year, he rekindled his relationship with country music fans by performing a memorable duet with Emmylou Harris on "That Lovin' You Feeling Again," which went on to win a Grammy Award.

When Van Halen covered "Oh, Pretty Woman" in , rock fans were reminded that gratitude for the song was owed to Orbison. Orbison died of a heart attack on December 6, His posthumously released comeback album, Mystery Girl , reached No.

Although he was only 52 when he died, Orbison lived to see his rightful place in music history restored. Despite his sales, charts and accolades, Orbison is most remembered today as an improbable rock star who put his heart on his sleeve and moved people with his music.

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