Scholars put forth April 23 as the birthday of Shakespeare, and it's also the natal day of rock 'n' roll singer Roy Orbison. Shakespeare only heard about America, but Orbison had the kind of ties to Nashville that remain bound tightly. One of the lucky pre-Beatles singers whose style once again came into vogue during the '80s, Orbison died in Madison, Tenn., in 1988. After his death, his wife, Barbara, ran his business and got into song publishing, and her passing last year puts a period to one phase of the Orbison story — his sons Alex and Roy Jr. are now at the helm, with another Orbison offspring, Wesley, making a solo record.
The corporeal existence of the singer who started out as a rockabilly madman doing such material as "Go! Go! Go!" and "Ooby Dooby" now seems as remote as the facts of Shakespeare's life, although we know Orbison liked motorcycles and seems to have been bemused by the use of his song, "In Dreams," during a particularly menacing sequence of David Lynch's 1986 Blue Velvet. Orbison wasn't a rockabilly artist in the same vein as Jerry Lee Lewis or Carl Perkin — the Texas singer was a natural romantic, and needed a soft cushion to support him.
