bill dees, nÃ© william marvin dees (24 january 1939 borger, texas â 24 october 2012 mountain home, arkansas), was an american musician most famous for his song writing collaborations with singer roy orbison.william yardley, bill dees, 73, orbison collaborator, dies, new york times, november 1, 2012 ==career== dees played guitar and sang with a band called "the five bops," gaining enough recognition to perform on an amarillo, texas radio station. dees eventually made his way to nashville, tennessee where his meeting roy orbison led to a collaboration that produced a string of successful songs for monument records including the hits "oh, pretty woman" and "it's over". in 1967, dees co-wrote all the songs for the orbison album and mgm motion picture the fastest guitar alive. beyond his work with orbison, bill dees wrote hundreds of songs, a number of which were recorded by performers such as johnny cash, loretta lynn, skeeter davis, glen campbell, billy joe royal, frank ifield, mark dinning and gene pitney. in 2000, he recorded his own album titled saturday night at the movies, a compilation of songs previously sung by orbison that had been written with dees and some that dees had written alone. dees resided near branson, missouri, and continued to write songs with collaborator jack pribek until his death on october 24, 2012. he was living at a nursÂ­ing facilÂ­ity in mountain home, arkansas at the time of his death. ==songs with roy orbison (partial list)== *"oh, pretty woman" (1964) [uk #1, 3wks; us #1, 3wks] *"it's over" (1964) [uk #1, 2wks; us #9] *"borne on the wind" (1964) [uk #15] *"ride away" (1965) [uk #34; us #25] *"crawling bac
1939_births 2012_deaths American_country_guitarists American_country_singer-songwriters American_country_singers American_male_singers American_rock_guitarists Musicians_from_Texas People_from_Borger,_Texas Songwriters_from_Texas