'By and large, I've had a wonderful life': Lodi native, jazz legend Pat Yankee dead at 96

Jun. 11—The curtain has come down on a Lodi native, performer and musician who performed up and down the West Coast and on Broadway.

Pat Yankee Weigum Rosenauer, known professionally as simply "Pat Yankee," passed away in Lodi on May 30, just 10 minutes from where she had been born. She was 96.

"By and large, I've had a wonderful life," Yankee told the News-Sentinel in 2019. "People have been good to me."

Born July 20, 1927, Yankee attended Victor School and grew up on a farm there, enjoying a "typical Lodi childhood."

Yankee saw movies at the old theater, visited the soda fountain on Main Street, was a member of the Rainbow girls, dressed up as a Flame Tokay grape for the Grape Festival Parade when she was 8 or 9, and she and her brother grew tomatoes and sold them on Highway 12 for the Alpine- Victor 4-H.

But her life as a performer began when she was 6 years old as a tap dancer, and said she only joined 4-H to practice on the Alpine School stage after meetings.

Yankee got her first taste of the spotlight at American Legion Hall, where she was paid $5 to dance in a show, and her childhood took a turn her sophomore year at Lodi Union High School when she moved to New York City — chaperoned by an older cousin — to pursue a career in show business.

Soon after her move to the Big Apple, her career took off, and included a stint with Ted Lewis — better known as "Mr. Entertainment" — as a member of his New York vaudeville show.

During her time with Lewis, she performed with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, a dance legend who shattered a number of race barriers in the industry and went on to perform in multiple films with Shirley Temple.

Robinson was performing nearby and dropped by to see Lewis' show. He joined Yankee and Lewis on stage.

"It was one of the highlights of my life to dance with Bill Robinson," she said in 2019.

She would land the role of Anita in the 1946 film "It's Great to Be Young" starring Jimmy Lloyd, her only film credit, and said the experience was a fun highlight, although it wasn't great.

However, it was packaged as a double feature with "The Big Sleep" starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and the films were shown all over the country.

When Yankee returned home for the holidays that year, the Lodi movie theater she'd visited as a child was showing the film with the tagline featuring "Lodi's own Patty Weigum."

Soon afterward, she began headlining shows in San Francisco and Las Vegas. It was in The City By the Bay where she met her husband Lou Rosenauer.

According to family, Yankee was singing at Earthquake McGoon's, the longest-running traditional jazz club in San Francisco, with featured act Turk Murphy.

Rosenauer attended the show with a friend and "asked who the beautiful entertainer was." They met for lunch on Maiden Lane in San Francisco the next day and never left each other's sides.

The couple later moved to Madrid where Yankee continued to perform at major hotels and jazz spots, while Rosenauer expanded his entrepreneurial businesses in Europe.

They stayed for about a dozen years, and upon returning to California in the 1980s, settled in San Francisco.

Yankee began performing again, putting the "The Gentlemen of Jazz" band together and resumed her singing career in clubs along the West Coast. She also performed many times at New York's famous Metropole on Broadway.

Later, the acting bug returned and she produced and starred in a show about the life of Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues.

The show, "To Bessie, With Love" was performed at every major jazz festival, and at many performing arts centers on the West Coast.

It was nominated for Best New Musical by the Bay Area Theater Critics and Yankee was awarded "Best Female Performer in a New Musical."

One year, Yankee returned to Lodi and served as Grape Festival Parade grand marshal, the same event where she had dressed as a grape as a child. She said it was "an experience," because not everyone in town remembered her.

"I heard some people say, 'Who in the hell is she?'" she said with a laugh.

In 2015, long-time dedicated fan Medea Isphording Bern reached out to Yankee for images she could use in her book "San Francisco Jazz."

A photo of Yankee ended up on the cover, and soon afterward, the pair collaborated on a biography of the Lodi native entitled "You Gotta See Your Mama Every Night."

During the writing process, Yankee hated dictating answers to Bern's questions on tape, and she never learned to type. She decided to write her answers instead, so that if something looked or sounded wrong, she could change it.

And then, it took longer than expected to share all of her stories and anecdotes she'd collected over the decades. The book was in progress for more than three years, finally released in 2019.

"It got to be boring!" she said with a laugh. "Sometimes for two or three weeks it was like an albatross around your neck."

Yankee said she always thought of Lodi as her home, and eventually retired and returned to be closer to family and friends.

"It's always been that way, 'I'm going home.'", she said in 2019. "I've never forgotten my roots."

Yankee is survived by her niece Kathy Weigum Bender (James) and her great nieces and nephews.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Tobias and Martha Weigum; brother Wallace Weigum; husband Louis Rosenauer; and nephew Michael Weigum. A private service will be held for immediate family only.