The memory of a dance can last forever

She didn’t realize he was standing behind her, until someone at the table said, “Aren’t you going to dance with him?”

Patti Jones turned, and there was Clint Eastwood. He was holding out his hand, waiting to take her for a swirl on the dance floor.

She was young, pretty and had a voice dropped straight from a choir of angels.

She also was a married woman.

This was Clint Eastwood, though.

And it was just a dance.

“I don’t remember the song, but it was a ballad, so it was a slow dance,” she said. “I was nervous and scared. I came up to about his belt buckle. When it was over, I thanked him and he asked, ‘One more?’ It was a slow dance, too.”

A memory like that can pinch you for a lifetime. It can float in your dreams. It can make you the envy of every woman in the neighborhood.

Eastwood is now 87 years old and still going strong. He was at Robins Air Force Base recently to shoot scenes for his new movie. He has danced with a lot of ladies over the years, so he may not remember the one from 47 years ago.

At the same time, Eastwood was in in the area last Tuesday, Patti was in a Macon hospital, recovering from pneumonia. She was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer one year ago this month.

In 1970, she and her husband, Evan, were founding members of a Macon-born-and-bred band called Family Affair. Patti was the lead singer. Evan played trumpet, electric piano and organ.

Their tour took them to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Eastwood filming “The Beguiled.” It was released nine months before “Dirty Harry,” which made him a box office star. The handsome, rugged actor already had gained a measure of notoriety with a string of “spaghetti westerns” and the TV series “Rawhide” in the 1960s.

A writer for the movie invited the Joneses to watch some of the filming in Baton Rouge. Later, when Family Affair opened at a hotel across town, Eastwood sent a dozen roses.

Eastwood was not the first – or last – celebrity to cross their path. Playing in five-star hotels had a way of bringing out the stars.

They met famous actors, musicians and athletes. They pulled up chairs next to Robert Goulet, Dick Van Dyke, Liza Minelli, Bob Hope and Mac Davis. They brushed elbows with Lucille Ball, Richard Pryor, Joey Heatherton, Joe Garagiola, James Earl Jones and Evel Knievel. They shook hands with Joe Namath and ate dinner with Arnold Palmer. And lest they forget meeting George Lindsey, better known as “Goober” and Jim Nabors, who was “Gomer Pyle.”

Back in Macon, they were invited to play at the street party for the first Cherry Blossom Festival. At the old Hilton Hotel, they drew such large crowds the hotel later converted its main dining room to a supper club. They jammed with Greg Allman, Dickey Betts, Jaimoe and members of Elvis Presley’s band when he was here for a concert. In 1974, Evan and Chet Burchfield bought the Pinebrook Inn on Forsyth Road, and Family Affair became the house band there.

Closing in on almost 50 years together, Patti and Evan have kept the Family Affair name intact. They no longer tour, unless you count local retirement communities like Carlyle Place and John Wesley Villas as road trips. The seasoned citizens still love to hear them play Sinatra but some can still get up and line dance to Top 40 tunes. Many have told Patti she sounds a lot like Karen Carpenter.

She was born into a musical family. Her brother, the late Johnny Davis, was a musician who played in Las Vegas and appeared three times on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” Her sisters, Ailene and Brenda, were members of a gospel group. At a young age, Patti’s teachers at Clisby Elementary would take her out of class to sing for the other students.

Evan followed in his father’s musical footsteps. Norman Jones was an accomplished musician who played for the legendary Uncle Ned and the Hayloft Jamboree. (Ned Stripling’s band members became Macon’s first TV personalities, making history on Sept. 27, 1953, when WMAZ-TV went on the air with its first TV signal.)

Evan is 8 years older than Patti. Whenever he went to see her brother in high school, he remembered her as a 12-year-old running around in the yard. After being drafted into the Army, he returned home to Macon and hooked up with a band.

When the lead singer left for her honeymoon, the band searched for a replacement. Someone suggested Patti, who was 17 years old and no longer the little girl Evan had remembered. Patti remained with the band after the lead singer returned, and she and Evan were married in January 1968, when she was still a senior at McEvoy High School.

After her brother returned from playing Vegas, the three of them formed a band. They came up with the name Family Affair, because that’s what they were – a family. It also was the name of a popular television comedy at the time.

They had a booking agent, and played dance sets and show sets at venues across the East, South and Midwest. Patti recorded one song. She was backed up by Jackie Gleason’s 28-piece orchestra at Criteria Studios in Miami.

The Joneses now live in appropriately enough, Jones County. Patti and Evan have three children and four grandchildren. A lifelong smoker, she was diagnosed with cancer in both lungs. She has been undergoing radiation and immunotherapy.

She has no regrets her stage was never larger or the spotlight brighter. But there always are those “what ifs?” from singers whose music never made it beyond the doors of nightclubs and hotel ballrooms.

“In a different time and place, she was good enough to be a star,” said Evan. “A lot of things happened, and we’re glad they did. But I hate it that she didn’t go farther. She could have. She was really that good. Anybody will tell you that.”

She danced with Clint Eastwood, though. The years can’t take that away.

This story was originally published August 4, 2017 at 3:34 PM with the headline "The memory of a dance can last forever."