American singer songwriter Roy Orbison died of a heart attack at the age of 52. Orbison’s death marked the end of a string of tragedies that had plagued his life: the death of his first wife, Claudette, in a motorcycle accident and the death of two sons in a house fire.

A musician’s musician through and through, Orbison’s work has been said to go further than pop music into the realm of classical and operatic composition. Tom Waitsdescribes Orbison as “a rockabiily Rigoletto, as important as Caruso in Sunglasses and a leather jacket.”