Tuck Andress und Patti Cathcart are celebrating their 20th year together as partners and soulmates. The Oklahoma-born Andress first studied piano as a youth, but eventually switched to guitar, relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area to study music at Stanford. Over time, Tuck developed his signature multi-layered playing technique that has so confounded critics and thrilled audiences. Patti Cathcart, a San Francisco native, was a classically trained vocalist who liked to hang out at jazz and rock clubs. The two describe their 1978 meeting as musical love at first sight.
Over the subsequent six years, in clubs, steak joints, and lounges across the country, Tuck & Patti honed their highly individualistic style. Their first three albums, Tears of Joy (1988), Love Warriors (1989), and Dream (1991) at Windham Hill established the two worldwide, leading the dean of jazz critics, the late Leonard Feather, to make his now famous pronouncement: ''Not since Ella Fitzgerald met Joe Pass on stage has there been so felicitous a mating as Tuck & Patti."
Over the subsequent six years, in clubs, steak joints, and lounges across the country, Tuck & Patti honed their highly individualistic style. Their first three albums, Tears of Joy (1988), Love Warriors (1989), and Dream (1991) at Windham Hill established the two worldwide, leading the dean of jazz critics, the late Leonard Feather, to make his now famous pronouncement: ''Not since Ella Fitzgerald met Joe Pass on stage has there been so felicitous a mating as Tuck & Patti."
