Rosemary Squires

Born Joan Rosemary Yarrow on 7 December 1928 in Bristol, Avon, England, the daughter of a civil servant, she studied voice, piano and guitar both prior to and throughout her time at Salisbury’s St. Edmund’s Girls School. A 1940 appearance on the BBC Home Service’s Children’s Hour sparked immediate local demand, prompting bookings at venues that included American army bases. Possessing a distinctive west country burr, she performed with various ensembles at those camps and also sang with the Polish Military Band during stints working first in an antique bookshop and later in an office. Once established as a professional singer she worked for big-band leaders including Ted Heath, Geraldo and Cyril Stapleton, as well as for smaller jazz groups directed by Max Harris, Kenny Baker and Alan Clare; with the last-named’s trio she performed at the BBC Festival of Jazz held at the Royal Albert Hall.

Familiar to British listeners since the late 1940s through frequent appearances on BBC Radio light-entertainment shows such as Melody Time and Workers’ Playtime, she also hosted numerous series of her own. In 1962 a recording of “The Gypsy Rover” placed just outside the UK singles chart. Now once more resident in Salisbury, she continues to perform while maintaining a longstanding interest in Tibetan culture; she served as secretary of Britain’s Tibet Society between 1972 and 1975. Her 1991 marriage, the first in her life, astonished both herself and her circle of friends, although she had previously adopted other professional names. Under the pseudonym Joanne And The Streamliners she recorded the popular track “Frankfurter Sandwiches.” Throughout the 1990s she sustained a parallel career voicing television commercials and presented her own Sunday-afternoon programme as a disc jockey on Radio Wiltshire.