When George Harrison asked Roy Orbison to be in The Traveling Wilburys, he quite literally proposed the idea to him.

Now, everyone knows that no one sings like Roy Orbison.” Orbison completed his comeback solo album, “Mystery Girl,” in November of 1988 but died suddenly of a heart attack the following month.

While Roy’s popularity had waned by the early 1980s, Don McLean and Van Halen found success at that time with respective hit covers of “Crying” and “Oh, Pretty Woman.” Orbison’s ...