Jazz joint jumping with hometown history
Pat Yankee, Cell Block 7 bring joys of jazz to American Legion Hall
More than 125 people filled the American Legion Hall on Tuesday night, as Lodi native Pat Yankee returned to her old hometown for a performance with the Cell Block 7 jazz band.
As people filed into the hall for the concert, more tables had to be added to accommodate the growing crowd.
Yankee sang 10 songs, including the one she is best known for, “Was I Drunk, Was He Handsome and Did My Ma Give Me Hell.”
The song dates back to the 1920s, and she sang it with Turk Murphy, Cell Block 7’s Bob Romans said.
One notable audience member was 102-year-old Dixie Belletto, who attended the event with her daughter Lita Wallach.
“We had a great time. The music, the food,” Wallach said. “The one thing I was really impressed with was so many local people came out and enjoyed the music. It was so great they had that concert and brought Pat Yankee
“It was wonderful. My mom wanted to get up and dance and she and I did, and we had a wonderful time! She also had a chance to meet Pat Yankee, and she and Pat had a lot to talk about.”
to town.”
Belletto is an active centenarian, who still lives independently in her Lodi home. As a teenager in high school, she played drums in her Catholic high school band, Wallach said.
When Belletto was in her 90s, she expressed an interest in reconnecting with her drumming roots, so Wallach bought her mom drum lessons with Romans as a birthday present.
LITA WALLACH DAUGHTER OF CENTENARIAN
Romans is the husband of Wallach’s flute teacher, Carole.
Belletto took classes for several years, until her diminishing eyesight made it difficult to read the music, Romans said.
But her love for music remains, and on Tuesday night she enjoyed the concert, and even danced with her daughter.
“It was wonderful. My mom wanted to get up and dance and she and I did, and we had a wonderful time!” Wallach said. “She also had a chance to meet Pat Yankee, and she and Pat had a lot to talk about.”
Yankee — born Patricia Weigum — lived in Lodi until she left for New York City at the age of 16. She soon joined a vaudeville-style stage show managed by Ted Lewis as a tap dancer. She also sang, and even acted in the film “It’s Great to Be Young” in 1946.
Later in life, she performed in Las Vegas, with Turk Murphy as well as her own band, Pat Yankee and the Sinners.
Aside from a brief hiatus when she and her husband moved to Madrid for his work, Yankee has been performing all her life.
She was joined on Tuesday by pianist Mike Greensill, who studied music at Leeds College in England, then toured Europe and Asia before settling in San Francisco.
A regular performer in the Bay Area, Greensill has written music and created arrangements for big bands, the Boston Pops, the San Francisco Symphony, the Kronos Quartet and others.
His albums include “A Message From the Man in the Moon,” recorded with his wife Wesla Whitfield, and “Live at the Plush Room.”
Lodi Living Editor Kyla Cathey contributed to this report.