Biography
Born Lilian Patricia Lita Roza on March 14, 1926, in Liverpool, the future vocalist entered the world as the eldest of seven children to Elizabeth Anne and Francis Vincent Roza, a Spanish marine engineer who also played piano part-time at a neighborhood nightclub. At age twelve she auditioned for dancing roles in pantomime to ease the family’s financial burden and eventually shared the stage with comedian Ted Ray and actress Noel Gordon in the revue Black Velvet. When wartime conditions in London grew increasingly perilous during the 1940 blitz, her parents insisted she return to Liverpool, where she shifted her focus to singing and secured a resident spot at the Merseyside club The New Yorker.
Soon afterward she joined the Harry Roy Orchestra, one of Britain’s foremost wartime big bands, yet was barred from the group’s Middle East tour because she was still only seventeen. At eighteen she stepped away from performing altogether to wed Canadian serviceman James Shepherd Holland and relocate with him to Miami, though the marriage ended quickly. After the war she resettled in Britain and found employment with bandleader Ted Heath, working alongside vocalists Dickie Valentine and Denis Lotis. Like many peers of the era, she balanced big-band duties with solo recordings; in 1953 she cut a version of Patti Page’s “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window,” which reached the top of the British charts for a single week in April and became only the eighth number-one single since the chart’s recent inception, outselling the original Page release. Roza nevertheless despised the track and refused to sing it in public.
She departed the Ted Heath ensemble to marry trumpet player Ron Hughes and earned the Melody Maker dance-band poll’s Top Girl Singer award for 1951–1952 while claiming the New Musical Express Top Female Singer title each year from 1951 through 1955. Follow-up solo successes proved modest—“Hey There” and “Jimmy Unknown”—yet she issued fifty-five singles and four albums for Decca: Presenting Lita Roza, Listening in the After-Hours, Love Is the Answer, and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. The rise of rock & roll curtailed further record sales, prompting her to concentrate, from the mid-1950s onward, on television—including her own series Lita Roza Sings, repeated collaborations with Ted Heath, and appearances on the fledgling pop program Six Five Special—as well as cabaret engagements that took her to Australia, New Zealand, and the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.
In 1982 she rejoined Denis Lotis, Don Lusher, and most of the original musicians for a series of Ted Heath reunion concerts. Two decades later, in 2001, she became the first artist honored with a bronze disc on the Wall of Fame in Matthew Street, directly across from the Cavern Club; the installation celebrates every Liverpool act that had reached number one, encompassing everyone from Frankie Vaughan, Michael Holiday, and the Beatles to Sonia, Mel C, and Atomic Kitten. Throughout the late 1990s and into the new century, Universal Music—holder of the rights to her Decca catalog—issued multiple compilations together with her final album Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea and the collection Ted Heath Singles 1951–1953. Her last broadcast performance occurred on Radio Merseyside in November 2002. Lita Roza died at her London home on August 14, 2008, at the age of eighty-two.
Soon afterward she joined the Harry Roy Orchestra, one of Britain’s foremost wartime big bands, yet was barred from the group’s Middle East tour because she was still only seventeen. At eighteen she stepped away from performing altogether to wed Canadian serviceman James Shepherd Holland and relocate with him to Miami, though the marriage ended quickly. After the war she resettled in Britain and found employment with bandleader Ted Heath, working alongside vocalists Dickie Valentine and Denis Lotis. Like many peers of the era, she balanced big-band duties with solo recordings; in 1953 she cut a version of Patti Page’s “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window,” which reached the top of the British charts for a single week in April and became only the eighth number-one single since the chart’s recent inception, outselling the original Page release. Roza nevertheless despised the track and refused to sing it in public.
She departed the Ted Heath ensemble to marry trumpet player Ron Hughes and earned the Melody Maker dance-band poll’s Top Girl Singer award for 1951–1952 while claiming the New Musical Express Top Female Singer title each year from 1951 through 1955. Follow-up solo successes proved modest—“Hey There” and “Jimmy Unknown”—yet she issued fifty-five singles and four albums for Decca: Presenting Lita Roza, Listening in the After-Hours, Love Is the Answer, and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. The rise of rock & roll curtailed further record sales, prompting her to concentrate, from the mid-1950s onward, on television—including her own series Lita Roza Sings, repeated collaborations with Ted Heath, and appearances on the fledgling pop program Six Five Special—as well as cabaret engagements that took her to Australia, New Zealand, and the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.
In 1982 she rejoined Denis Lotis, Don Lusher, and most of the original musicians for a series of Ted Heath reunion concerts. Two decades later, in 2001, she became the first artist honored with a bronze disc on the Wall of Fame in Matthew Street, directly across from the Cavern Club; the installation celebrates every Liverpool act that had reached number one, encompassing everyone from Frankie Vaughan, Michael Holiday, and the Beatles to Sonia, Mel C, and Atomic Kitten. Throughout the late 1990s and into the new century, Universal Music—holder of the rights to her Decca catalog—issued multiple compilations together with her final album Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea and the collection Ted Heath Singles 1951–1953. Her last broadcast performance occurred on Radio Merseyside in November 2002. Lita Roza died at her London home on August 14, 2008, at the age of eighty-two.
Albums
Singles
