Page "Roy Orbison" Paragraph 13

" Uptown " earned a modest spot at number 72 on the Billboard Top 100 and Orbison set his goal on negotiating a contract with an upscale nightclub somewhere.

Rock and roll itself, in its infancy in the late 1950s, was stalled.

Elvis Presley was in the Army.

Eddie Cochran and fellow Texan Buddy Holly — both of whom Orbison had previously toured with — had died, to Orbison's deep astonishment.

Little Richard had found religion and Chuck Berry was in jail.

Orbison's former Sun Records colleague Jerry Lee Lewis was disgraced when his marriage to his 13-year-old cousin was reported widely in the press.

In their wake, pop music filled the radio waves, dominated by teen idol crooners who sang cleansed formulas like those about the twist dance craze and " death discs " like " Teen Angel " and " Endless Sleep ".