Roy Orbison Appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show

Pretty Woman
#1 in 1964


 Roy Kelton Orbison was born on April 23, 1936, in Vernon, Texas. 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. From childhood he suffered from a combination of hyperopia, severe astigmatism, anisometropia, and strabismus. The reason for the dark sunglasses is that he had left his regular glasses in an airplane, due to go on stage in a few minutes and unable to see without corrective lenses, his only other pair of glasses were dark prescription sunglasses and he had to see to get on stage. Orbison had triple heart bypass surgery on January 18, 1978. On December 6, 1988, at the age of 52, he suffered a fatal heart attack while visiting his mother in the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville, Tennesse
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