b. Julie Rolls, 6 April 1943, London, England. She left her Bermondsey secondary school in 1959 for a long working holiday as a dancer in Spain. Next, she worked as a secretary and then a ship’s stewardess before becoming singer with a middle-of-the-road band led by Teddy Foster with whom she later functioned in a cabaret duo, and, under a new stage surname, made a radio debut in 1962 on the BBC Light Programme’s Music With A Beat. Following an audition for Philips A & R manager Johnny Franz, she recorded her first single ‘It’s Magic’, in 1963. Her recording career touched its zenith the following year when ‘The Wedding’ - an orchestrated translation of a song (by Argentinian Joaquin Prieto) which she had first heard in Spain - rose to a UK number 3, triggered by an initial plug on the ITV television regional magazine, Day By Day. As well as generating huge sheet music sales, it also disturbed the US Top Ten, despite two previous hit versions in 1961 by Anita Bryant and Malcolm Vaughan. The yuletide follow-up, ‘Like A Child’ and 1965’s ‘Hawaiian Wedding Song’ were only minor hits, but Rogers remained in demand on the variety circuit for the rest of the decade.