Roy Orbison dropped dead of a heart attack in the last, wintry month of 1988. It was a damn shame.
In 52 years of life, Roy Kelton Orbison had transformed himself from a shy, nearsighted kid from Wink, Texas, to a towering founding father of rock and roll, a peerless balladeer of sweeping symphonic odes to lost love who had come up through the same Memphis studio that gave us the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Elvis.