West Texas Balladeer Rises To Rock Stardom

The Number 1 single on the pop-music chart for the week ending Jun. 11, 1961 was “Running Scared” by the West Texas balladeer Elvis Presley once called “the greatest singer in the world.”

The year was 1936 and the place was Vernon just this side of the Red River. Orbie Lee and Nadine Orbison welcomed the newest addition to their working-class family, a boy they named Roy Kelton.

The defense plants drew the breadwinner to Fort Worth during World War II, but he pulled up stakes again after butter became more important than guns. The Orbisons moved out west to Wink, a tiny oil-patch community not far from where the New Mexico and Texas state lines come to a point.

Music was as much a part of Roy