In the earlier days of rock ‘n’ roll, some of the great stars were Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly.
All of them ran into issues of one sort or another by the 1960’s. Elvis got drafted and worse, he got involved with Col. Tom Parker, who had him making the worst movies imaginable. Berry was in jail from 1962 for a questionable violation of the Mann Act. Little Richard wrestled with his conflict between God and his sexuality while Lewis’s career hit the crapper
after people learned that he married his 13-year-old cousin and it took him a very long time to recover. Holly of course died in a 1957 plane crash.
All of that left the field open and new acts eventually flowed in, including the bands of the British Invasion like the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and the Who.
On the U.S. side, Roy Orbison rose to prominence.
Orbison was born in the same year as Holly and about three hours away in Texas but his career took longer to get going.
His first hit came in 1961 with Only the Lonely and that was followed by Crying.
In this video from 1965, compared to the wild scenes of the 1950’s acts, not to mention the ecstatic reactions the Beatles would get in the early 1960’s, Orbison’s audience is hushed. No one yells or screams, no one even moves much.
At the very end, a young woman puts her face in her hands, overcome.
Orbison was just not like anyone else. Other stars were bigger, but almost no one could hold a crowd in their hand the way he does here. Just amazing.
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