Tuck and Patti

After 20 years of making music together as husband-and-wife jazz duo Tuck & Patti, Tuck Andress’s guitar and Patti Cathcart’s vocals blend smoothly into a honed sound all their own. They perform both their own compositions, such as “High Heel Blues,” and standards like “One Hand, One Heart” from West Side Story and Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish.” Each concert ends with their signature closer, “You Take My Breath Away.”
Tuck & Patti, who met in San Francisco in 1978 while auditioning for a Las Vegas-style show band, had an immediate connection, claiming in the December 7, 1988, edition of the Boston Globe that theirs was love at first sight: “‘Each of us had an idea for a special, distinctive sound after absorbing all those influences, said Tuck. Patti chimed in, ‘And I’ve been quoted before, accurately, that I am a product of everything I’ve ever heard, although I’d put Mahalia Jackson and Ella Fitzgerald first and foremost. But the point is when we met, we each knew we’d found the perfect musical partner to explore with.'” Before long they began working as a duo, playing in small Bay Area clubs. They were married in 1981, after a trip to India, where Tuck, a follower of Maher Baba, made a pilgrimage to the guru’s grave. On the way back, he proposed in Paris.