Lita Roza

Lita Roza was born Lilian Patricia Lita Roza on the 14th March 1926 in Liverpool to Elizabeth Anne and Francis Vincent Roza, a Spanish marine engineer and part time pianist at a local nightclub. The eldest of seven children, she auditioned as a dancer at the age of 12 in a pantomime to help support the family. Eventually working up to performing with the comedian Ted Ray and actress Noel Gordon in the show Black Velvet. Because life was becoming too dangerous during the blitz of 1940 in London, her family wanted her back in Liverpool. She turned to singing on her return and managed to get a job as a resident singer in a Merseyside club called The New Yorker. Shortly afterwards, she signed to become a singer with The Harry Roy Orchestra, one of Britain's leading wartime big bands, however when Roy was booked to tour the Middle East, the young Lita Roza was not allowed to join them, being only 17 years old . At just 18 years, she retired from show business, marrying James Shepherd Holland, one of the Canadian servicemen who were stationed in the UK and they moved to Miami. The marriage did not last however, and after the war, she returned to Britain, finding work with another top bandleader of the time, The Ted Heath Band alongside Dickie Valentine and Denis Lotis. As many of her contemporaries, she combined working with a big band with a career as a solo singer and in 1953 she recorded a version of Patti Page's How Much Is That Doggie In The Window which topped the charts in April for one week, easily beating off the challenge of the Page version only the eighth number one sing in the recently introduced British charts. Despite its success, Lita Roza hated the song and would never perform it in public She left the Ted Heath Band and re-married Ronnie Hughes, a trumpet...