Jo Ann Castle (born Jo Ann Zwering on September 3, 1939, in Bakersfield, California, United States) was a honky-tonk pianist best known as a bandmember on The Lawrence Welk Show during the 1960's. Her offstage personal struggles made her infamous among bandmembers. She adopted the stage name "Castle" from the name of an accordion manufacturer, another instrument she played with great proficiency. She was often referred to as "Queen of the Honky-Tonk Piano" by Lawrence Welk himself.
Originally discovered for Welk by Joe Feeney in 1959, Castle became a permanent member of the "Welk Family" just prior to her twentieth birthday, replacing the departing Big Tiny Little. Welk wished to announce her age on the air, but she informed him that revealing her actual age publicly would jeopardize her job as an underage Las Vegas bar and nightclub entertainer. At first nonplussed, he then surprised her on air a week later with a cake and announcing her hiring. Shortly after joining the Show, Castle eloped and married cameraman, Dean Hall. They divorced in 1966 after having a daughter together. Castle met and married Bill Roeschlein in 1968, with whom she had a son and a daughter. Castle left the Welk Show in 1969 and divorced Roeschlein in 1971. Her third marriage, in 1978, ended in 1986.
In the 1990s, Castle performed at the Lawrence Welk-owned Champagne Theater in Branson, Missouri, as well as making a guest appearance for a show with Jimmy Sturr and His Orchestra on RFD TV. Castle suffered a series of strokes in 2005 and 2009.
On September 3, 2011, Castle married her fourth husband, Lin Biviano, a tambourine player and hairstylist from Boston.
Famous quotes containing the words ann and/or castle:
“Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men’s failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal’s natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle?”
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)