1.
Shreveport, Louisiana
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Shreveport is the third-largest city in the state of Louisiana and the 113th-largest city in the United States. It is the seat of Caddo Parish and extends along the Red River into neighboring Bossier Parish, Bossier City is separated from Shreveport by the Red River. The population of Shreveport was 199,311 in 2010, the Shreveport-Bossier City Metropolitan Statistical Area ranks 111th in the United States, according to the United States Census Bureau. Shreveport is the commercial and cultural center of the Ark-La-Tex region, where Arkansas, Louisiana, Shreveport was established to launch a town at the meeting point of the Red River and the Texas Trail. The Red River was cleared and made navigable by Captain Henry Miller Shreve. A 180-mile-long natural log jam, the Great Raft, had previously obstructed passage to shipping, Shreve used a specially modified riverboat, the Heliopolis, to remove the log jam. The company and the village of Shreve Town were named in Shreves honor, Shreve Town was originally contained within the boundaries of a section of land sold to the company by the indigenous Caddo Indians in 1835. In 1838 Caddo Parish was created from the large Natchitoches Parish, on March 20,1839, the town was incorporated as Shreveport. Originally, the town consisted of 64 city blocks, created by eight streets running west from the Red River and eight streets running south from Cross Bayou, Shreveport soon became a center of steamboat commerce, mostly cotton and agricultural crops. Shreveport also had a market, though slave trading was not as widespread as in other parts of the state. Steamboats plied the Red River, and stevedores loaded and unloaded cargo, by 1860, Shreveport had a population of 2,200 free people and 1,300 slaves within the city limits. During the American Civil War, Shreveport was the capital of Louisiana from 1863 to 1865, having succeeded Baton Rouge, the city was a Confederate stronghold throughout the war and was the site of the headquarters of the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederate Army. Fort Albert Sidney Johnston was built on a ridge northwest of the city, because of limited development in that area, the site is relatively undisturbed. Confederate President Jefferson Davis tried to flee to Shreveport, intending to go down the Mississippi, throughout the war, women in Shreveport did much to assist the soldiers fighting mostly far to the east. Winters writes of them in The Civil War in Louisiana, The women of Shreveport and vicinity labored long hours over their sewing machines to provide their men with adequate underclothing, joined by others, the Society collected blankets for the wounded and gave concerts and tableaux to raise funds. Tickets were sold for a ring given by the mercantile house of Hyams. A Confederate minstrel show gave two performances to raise money for the war effort in Shreveport in December 1862, the Shreveport Ladies Aid Society announced a grand dress ball for April 6,1863. That same month students at the Mansfield Female College in Mansfield in De Soto Parish presented a vocal and instrumental concert to support the war, the Red River, which had been opened by Shreve in the 1830s, remained navigable throughout the Civil War
2.
Louisiana
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Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Louisiana is the 31st most extensive and the 25th most populous of the 50 United States and its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the state in the U. S. with political subdivisions termed parishes. The largest parish by population is East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana is bordered by Arkansas to the north, Mississippi to the east, Texas to the west, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Much of the lands were formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh. These contain a rich southern biota, typical examples include birds such as ibis, there are also many species of tree frogs, and fish such as sturgeon and paddlefish. In more elevated areas, fire is a process in the landscape. These support a large number of plant species, including many species of orchids. Louisiana has more Native American tribes than any other state, including four that are federally recognized, ten that are state recognized. Before the American purchase of the territory in 1803, the current Louisiana State had been both a French colony and for a period, a Spanish one. In addition, colonists imported numerous African people as slaves in the 18th century, many came from peoples of the same region of West Africa, thus concentrating their culture. Louisiana was named after Louis XIV, King of France from 1643 to 1715, when René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River for France, he named it La Louisiane. The suffix -ana is a Latin suffix that can refer to information relating to an individual, subject. Thus, roughly, Louis + ana carries the idea of related to Louis, the Gulf of Mexico did not exist 250 million years ago when there was but one supercontinent, Pangea. As Pangea split apart, the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico opened, Louisiana slowly developed, over millions of years, from water into land, and from north to south. The oldest rocks are exposed in the north, in such as the Kisatchie National Forest. The oldest rocks date back to the early Tertiary Era, some 60 million years ago, the history of the formation of these rocks can be found in D. Spearings Roadside Geology of Louisiana. The sediments were carried north to south by the Mississippi River
3.
Nashville, Tennessee
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Nashville is the capital of the U. S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in the central part of the state. The city is a center for the music, healthcare, publishing, banking and transportation industries and it is known as a center of the country music industry, earning it the nickname Music City, U. S. A. Since 1963, Nashville has had a consolidated city-county government which includes six municipalities in a two-tier system. Nashville is governed by a mayor, vice-mayor, and 40-member Metropolitan Council, thirty-five of the members are elected from single-member districts, five are elected at-large. Reflecting the citys position in government, Nashville is home to the Tennessee Supreme Courts courthouse for Middle Tennessee. According to 2015 estimates from the U. S. Census Bureau, the balance population, which excludes semi-independent municipalities within Nashville, was 654,610. The 2015 population of the entire 13-county Nashville metropolitan area was 1,830,345, the 2015 population of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Columbia combined statistical area, a larger trade area, was 1,951,644. The town of Nashville was founded by James Robertson, John Donelson, and it was named for Francis Nash, the American Revolutionary War hero. Nashville quickly grew because of its location, accessibility as a port on the Cumberland River, a tributary of the Ohio River. By 1800, the city had 345 residents, including 136 African American slaves and 14 free blacks, in 1806, Nashville was incorporated as a city and became the county seat of Davidson County, Tennessee. In 1843, the city was named the permanent capital of the state of Tennessee, by 1860, when the first rumblings of secession began to be heard across the South, antebellum Nashville was a prosperous city. The citys significance as a port made it a desirable prize as a means of controlling important river. In February 1862, Nashville became the first state capital to fall to Union troops, the state was occupied by Union troops for the duration of the war. Within a few years after the Civil War, the Nashville chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was founded by Confederate veteran John W. Morton, meanwhile, the city had reclaimed its important shipping and trading position and developed a solid manufacturing base. The post–Civil War years of the late 19th century brought new prosperity to Nashville and these healthy economic times left the city with a legacy of grand classical-style buildings, which can still be seen around the downtown area. Circa 1950 the state approved a new city charter that provided for the election of city council members from single-member districts. This change was supported because at-large voting diluted the minority populations political power in the city and they could seldom gain a majority of the population to support a candidate of their choice
4.
Piano
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The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. The word piano is a form of pianoforte, the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument. The first fortepianos in the 1700s had a sound and smaller dynamic range. An acoustic piano usually has a wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings. Pressing one or more keys on the keyboard causes a padded hammer to strike the strings. The hammer rebounds from the strings, and the continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air, when the key is released, a damper stops the strings vibration, ending the sound. Notes can be sustained, even when the keys are released by the fingers and thumbs and this means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, going from the deepest bass range to the highest treble. The black keys are for the accidentals, which are needed to play in all twelve keys, more rarely, some pianos have additional keys. Most notes have three strings, except for the bass that graduates from one to two, the strings are sounded when keys are pressed or struck, and silenced by dampers when the hands are lifted from the keyboard. There are two types of piano, the grand piano and the upright piano. The grand piano is used for Classical solos, chamber music and art song and it is used in jazz. The upright piano, which is compact, is the most popular type, as they are a better size for use in private homes for domestic music-making. During the nineteenth century, music publishers produced many works in arrangements for piano, so that music lovers could play. The piano is widely employed in classical, jazz, traditional and popular music for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, with technological advances, amplified electric pianos, electronic pianos, and digital pianos have also been developed. The electric piano became an instrument in the 1960s and 1970s genres of jazz fusion, funk music. The piano was founded on earlier technological innovations in keyboard instruments, pipe organs have been used since Antiquity, and as such, the development of pipe organs enabled instrument builders to learn about creating keyboard mechanisms for sounding pitches
5.
Organ (music)
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In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more pipe divisions, each played with its own keyboard, played either with the hands on a keyboard or with the feet using pedals. The organ is an old musical instrument, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria. It was played throughout the Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman world, subsequently it re-emerged as a secular and recital instrument in the Classical music tradition. Pipe organs use air moving through pipes to produce sounds, since the 16th century, pipe organs have used various materials for pipes, which can vary widely in timbre and volume. The pipes are divided into ranks and controlled by the use of hand stops, although the keyboard is not expressive as on a piano and does not affect dynamics, some divisions may be enclosed in a swell box, allowing the dynamics to be controlled by shutters. Some organs are enclosed, meaning that all the divisions can be controlled by one set of shutters. Some special registers with free reed pipes are expressive and these instruments vary greatly in size, ranging from a cubic yard to a height reaching five floors, and are built in churches, synagogues, concert halls, and homes. Small organs are called positive or portative, increasingly hybrid organs are appearing in which pipes are augmented with electronic additions. Great economies of space and cost are possible especially when the lowest of the pipes can be replaced, non-piped organs include the reed organ or harmonium, which like the accordion and harmonica use air to excite free reeds. Electronic organs or digital organs, notably the Hammond organ, generate electronically produced sound through one or more loudspeakers, mechanical organs include the barrel organ, water organ, and Orchestrion. These are controlled by means such as pinned barrels or book music. Little barrel organs dispense with the hands of an organist and bigger organs are powered in most cases by a grinder or today by other means such as an electric motor. The pipe organ is the grandest musical instrument in size and scope, along with the clock, it was considered one of the most complex human-made mechanical creations before the Industrial Revolution. Pipe organs range in size from a short keyboard to huge instruments with over 10,000 pipes. A large modern organ typically has three or four keyboards with five each, and a two-and-a-half octave pedal board. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart called the organ the King of instruments, some of the biggest instruments have 64-foot pipes, and it sounds to an 8 Hz frequency fundamental tone. For instance, the Wanamaker organ, located in Philadelphia, USA, has sonic resources comparable with three simultaneous symphony orchestras, most organs in Europe, the Americas, and Australasia can be found in Christian churches. The introduction of organs is traditionally attributed to Pope Vitalian in the 7th century
6.
Harpsichord
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A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed, Harpsichord designates the whole family of similar plucked keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, muselar, and spinet. The harpsichord was used in Renaissance and Baroque music. During the late 18th century, it disappeared from the musical scene with the rise of the piano. In the 20th century, it made a resurgence, being used in historically informed performances of music, in compositions. Harpsichords vary in size and shape, but all have the basic functional arrangement. The player depresses a key that rocks over a pivot in the middle of its length, the other end of the key lifts a jack that holds a small plectrum, which plucks the string. When the player releases the key, the far end returns to its rest position, the plectrum, mounted on a tongue that can swivel backwards away from the string, passes the string without plucking it again. As the key reaches its rest position, a felt damper atop the jack stops the strings vibrations and these basic principles are explained in detail below. The keylever is a pivot, which rocks on a balance pin that passes through a hole drilled through the keylever. The jack is a thin, rectangular piece of wood that sits upright on the end of the keylever, the jacks are held in place by the registers. These are two strips of wood, which run in the gap between pinblock and bellyrail. The registers have rectangular mortises through which the pass as they can move up. The registers hold the jacks in the location needed to pluck the string. In the jack, a plectrum juts out almost horizontally and passes just under the string, historically, plectra were made of bird quill or leather, many modern harpsichords have plastic plectra. When the front of the key is pressed, the back of the key rises, the jack is lifted, the vertical motion of the jack is then stopped by the jackrail, which is covered with soft felt to muffle the impact. When the key is released, the falls back down under its own weight. This is made possible by having the plectrum held in a tongue attached with a pivot and a spring to the body of the jack
7.
Elvis Presley
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Elvis Aaron Presley was an American singer and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is referred to as the King of Rock and Roll. Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis and his music career began there in 1954, when he recorded a song with producer Sam Phillips at Sun Records. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was a popularizer of rockabilly. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, Presleys first RCA single, Heartbreak Hotel, was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. He was regarded as the figure of rock and roll after a series of successful network television appearances. In November 1956, Presley made his debut in Love Me Tender. In 1958, he was drafted into military service, in 1973, Presley featured in the first globally broadcast concert via satellite, Aloha from Hawaii. Several years of drug abuse severely damaged his health. Presley is one of the most celebrated and influential musicians of the 20th century and he won three Grammys, also receiving the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame. Presley was born on January 8,1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Gladys Love and Vernon Elvis Presley, Jesse Garon Presley, his identical twin brother, was delivered stillborn 35 minutes before his own birth. Thus, as a child, Presley became close to both parents and formed an especially close bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God, where he found his musical inspiration. Although he was in conflict with the Pentecostal church in his later years, rev. Rex Humbard officiated at his funeral, as Presley had been an admirer of Humbards ministry. Presleys ancestry was primarily a Western European mix, including Scots-Irish, Scottish, German, gladyss great-great-grandmother, Morning Dove White, was possibly a Cherokee Native American. Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family, Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evincing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance, the Presleys survived the F5 tornado in the 1936 Tupelo–Gainesville tornado outbreak. In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of kiting a check written by the landowner, Orville S. Bean and he was jailed for eight months, and Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives
8.
Patsy Cline
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Patsy Cline was an American country music singer. Part of the late 1950s/early 1960s Nashville sound, Cline successfully crossed over to pop music and was one of the most influential, successful and she died at the age of 30 in a multiple-fatality crash of the private plane of her manager, Randy Hughes. Cline was known for her tone, emotionally expressive and bold contralto voice. Along with Kitty Wells, she helped pave the way for women as performers in the genre. Books, movies, documentaries, articles and stage plays document her life, millions of her records have sold since her death. She won awards and accolades, causing many to view her as an icon at the level of Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash, in 1973, ten years after her death, she became the first female solo artist inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 1999, she was voted number 11 on VH1s special, The 100 Greatest Women in Rock and Roll, by members, according to her 1973 Country Music Hall of Fame plaque, Her heritage of timeless recordings is testimony to her artistic capacity. She was born Virginia Patterson Hensley on September 8,1932, in Winchester, Virginia and she was the eldest child of seamstress Hilda Virginia and blacksmith Samuel Lawrence Hensley. She soon had a brother and sister, Samuel Jr. They were known in the family as Ginny, John, the family moved often before finally settling in Winchester, Virginia, when Patsy was eight. Sam Hensley deserted his family in 1947, but the home was reportedly happy nonetheless. Cline was introduced to music at an age, singing in church with her mother. She liked stars such as Kay Starr, Jo Stafford, Hank Williams, Judy Garland, self-taught, she could not read music. When Patsy was thirteen, she was hospitalized with a throat infection, the fever affected my throat and when I recovered I had this booming voice like Kate Smith. After watching performers through the window at the radio station, she asked WINC disc jockey. Her performance in 1947 was well received, and she was asked back and this led to appearances at local nightclubs, wearing fringed Western outfits her mother made from Patsys designs. Cline performed in variety and talent shows in the Winchester and Tri-State areas, along with this and increasing local radio appearances on local radio, she gained a large following. In 1954 Jimmy Dean, already a young star, heard of her
9.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
10.
Louisiana Hayride
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Elvis Presley performed on the radio version of the program in 1954 and made his first television appearance on the television version of Louisiana Hayride on March 3,1955. First broadcast on April 3,1948 from the Municipal Auditorium in downtown Shreveport, Horace Hoss Logan was the original producer, the show was soon made into a Broadway attraction called Louisiana Hayride. Within a year of its debut, the program was so popular that a regional 25-station network was set up to broadcast portions of the show, the flagship station of the program was KWKH/1130 in Shreveport. Horace Logan continued to produce Louisiana Hayride until 1957, in 1999, Logan published a book about the Hayride that received acclaim from reviewers such as Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. Beginning with the successful first show on April 3,1948, while the Opry, the Jubilee and the Hayride all showcased established stars, the Hayride was where talented, but virtual unknowns, were also given exposure to a large audience. By mid-1954, a special 30-minute portion of Louisiana Hayride was being broadcast every Saturday on the AFN Pacific channel of the United Kingdom Scottish Forces Radio Network, on October 16 of that year, Elvis Presley appeared on the radio program. On March 3,1955, Presley made his first television appearance on the version of The Louisiana Hayride, carried by KSLA-TV. Within a few years, rock and roll had come to dominate the music scene, however, KWKH continued to use the Louisiana Hayride name for packaged music tours throughout the 1960s on a bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly basis, finally ending operations entirely in 1969. In August 1974, Shreveport businessman David Kent mounted a country music show originally called Hayride U. S. A. which was retitled Louisiana Hayride in 1975 after KWKH agreed to let Kent use the name. Barney Cannon, a KWKH deejay, became a specialist on the history of music, KWKH. In August 2009, the Louisiana Hayride was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, in 2009, after several years of litigation over the Louisiana Hayride name and trademark, a federal court ruled that Margaret Lewis Warwick owned the rights to the name. As of May 31,2012, KWKH had changed to a sports format and ceased producing the classic country music format reminiscent of the Hayride era
11.
Country music
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Country music is a genre of United States popular music that originated in the southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from the genre of United States, such as folk music. Blues modes have been used throughout its recorded history. The term country music is used today to many styles and subgenres. In 2009 country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, immigrants to the Southern Appalachian Mountains of North America brought the music and instruments of Europe and Africa along with them for nearly 300 years. Country music was introduced to the world as a Southern phenomenon, Bristol, Tennessee, has been formally recognized by the U. S. Congress as the Birthplace of Country Music, based on the historic Bristol recording sessions of 1927. Since 2014, the city has been home to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, historians have also noted the influence of the less-known Johnson City sessions of 1928 and 1929, and the Knoxville sessions of 1929 and 1930. Prior to these, pioneer settlers, in the Great Smoky Mountains region, had developed a musical heritage. The first generation emerged in the early 1920s, with Atlantas music scene playing a role in launching countrys earliest recording artists. Okeh Records began issuing hillbilly music records by Fiddlin John Carson as early as 1923, followed by Columbia Records in 1924, many hillbilly musicians, such as Cliff Carlisle, recorded blues songs throughout the 1920s. The most important was the Grand Ole Opry, aired starting in 1925 by WSM in Nashville, during the 1930s and 1940s, cowboy songs, or Western music, which had been recorded since the 1920s, were popularized by films made in Hollywood. Bob Wills was another musician from the Lower Great Plains who had become very popular as the leader of a hot string band. His mix of country and jazz, which started out as dance hall music, Wills was one of the first country musicians known to have added an electric guitar to his band, in 1938. Country musicians began recording boogie in 1939, shortly after it had played at Carnegie Hall. Gospel music remained a component of country music. It became known as honky tonk, and had its roots in Western swing and the music of Mexico. By the early 1950s a blend of Western swing, country boogie, rockabilly was most popular with country fans in the 1950s, and 1956 could be called the year of rockabilly in country music. Beginning in the mid-1950s, and reaching its peak during the early 1960s, the late 1960s in American music produced a unique blend as a result of traditionalist backlash within separate genres
12.
Roy Orbison
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Roy Kelton Orbison, nicknamed the Big O, was an American singer-songwriter and musician, known for his distinctive, impassioned voice, complex compositions and dark emotional ballads. The combination led many critics to describe his music as operatic, between 1960 and 1964,22 of his songs placed on the Billboard Top 40, including Only the Lonely, Crying, and Oh, Pretty Woman. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly and country and he was signed by Sun Records in 1956, but his greatest success came with Monument Records in the early 1960s. His career stagnated in the 1970s, but was revived by several versions of his songs. In 1988, he was a member of the Traveling Wilburys supergroup, along with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and he recorded his last solo album, Mystery Girl, the same year but died of a heart attack shortly thereafter. While most male rock and roll performers in the 1950s and 1960s projected a defiant masculinity, many of Orbisons songs instead conveyed a quiet, almost desperate and his voice ranged from baritone to tenor, and music scholars have suggested that he had a three- or four-octave range. During performances, he was known for standing still and solitary, and for wearing black clothes and dark sunglasses, which lent an air of mystery to his persona. His honors include inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in the year. Rolling Stone placed him at number 37 on their list of the Greatest Artists of All Time, in 2002, Billboard magazine listed Orbison at number 74 in the Top 600 recording artists. Roy Kelton Orbison was born in Vernon, Texas, the son of Orbie Lee Orbison, an oil well driller and car mechanic, and Nadine Vesta Shults. Both of his parents were unemployed during the Great Depression and, searching for work, moved the family to Fort Worth, Texas and he attended Denver Avenue Elementary School until a polio scare prompted the family to return to Vernon. Later, they moved to Wink, Texas, Orbison later described life in Wink as football, oil fields, oil, grease and sand and expressed relief that he was able to leave the desolate town. All the Orbison children were afflicted with poor eyesight, Roy used thick corrective lenses from an early age and he was not confident about his appearance and began dyeing his nearly-white hair black when he was still young. He was quiet and self-effacing, remarkably polite and obliging — a product, biographer Alan Clayson wrote and he was readily available to sing, however, and often became the focus of attention when he did. He considered his voice memorable, if not great, on Roys sixth birthday, his father gave him a guitar. He later recalled that by the age of seven, I was finished, you know, for anything else and his major musical influence as a youth was country music. He was particularly moved by Lefty Frizzells singing, with its slurred syllables and he also enjoyed Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers. One of the first musicians he heard in person was Ernest Tubb, in West Texas, he was exposed to many forms of music, sepia, Tex-Mex, the orchestral arrangements of Mantovani and cajun
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