Patti Page, at 71, Warmly Shares Her Golden Hits

Between the late ‘40s and the mid-’60s, Patti Page cranked out 15 gold singles and three gold albums. With more than 100 million record sales to date, she is still the all-time bestselling female singer.

So it was no surprise that an overflow crowd, the majority of whom clearly recalled Page’s glory days firsthand, turned out for her matinee performance at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday.

The fact that it was Page’s 71st birthday lent a special cachet to the performance, and the singer responded with a warm, elegant performance, working her way through a program of standards and greatest hits with easygoing confidence.

Her honey-toned voice, one of the finest pop music sounds of the post-World War II years, is still impressive, and she still sings with the slight Oklahoma twang that always gave her interpretations a unique quality.

Her program was enhanced by the addition of some tunes not generally associated with her, but her audience clearly expected her to launch into her familiar hits, and she did not disappoint.

The songs came rolling out, filled with the kind of nostalgia that glistened the eyes of her listeners: “Old Cape Cod,” “Allegheny Moon,” “With My Eyes Wide Open,” “You Belong to Me,” the inimitable “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window” and, of course, “Tennessee Waltz,” her biggest hit.

It was a pleasant afternoon of music from an artist whose work virtually defined the conservatism of the Eisenhower ‘50s--a fascinating reminder of the changing patterns of American pop music.