JAZZ REVIEW : Emotion Helps to Propel Tuck & Patti Performance

Talk about togetherness. Singer Patti Cathcart and guitarist Tuck Andress have not only been sharing their personal life, as husband and wife, for the last 14 years, they’ve also worked for 16 years as a duo--just voice and guitar.

For some couples, that kind of face-to-face contact would be a guaranteed prescription for divorce. But for Tuck and Patti, the dual levels of intimacy often generate performances that are dense with rich layers of emotional subtlety.

Monday night at the House of Blues, in the kickoff program for a two-month tour supporting their new album, “Learning How to Fly,” the pair were in good--if not top-notch--form. A crowded audience that drifted into talkiness during the slower numbers didn’t especially help matters. (Sadly, some of the talkiest of all were the record company executives and show-biz celebrities on the dining room level.)

Tuck & Patti deserved better. They are, quite simply, one of the most remarkable pairings in pop and jazz history--as musically intuitive as Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Henderson, as rhythmically intertwined as Astaire and Rogers.

With a few exceptions, almost everything they did together had the feel of unity, strength and spiritual togetherness that has been their hallmark from the beginning.

Cathcart’s soulful rendering of Lennon & McCartney’s “In My Life” was typical, a superb entry in their continuing examination of Beatles songs. Her a cappella improvisation on her own “High Heel Shoes,” brightly humorous, bubbling with blues inflections, revealed yet another aspect of her far-ranging vocal skills.

Andress’ solo segment spotlighted an astonishingly ambidextrous version of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Getaway,” one in which every nuance, from horn splashes to funk rhythms, emerged simultaneously from his mobile fingers.

Aside from the difficulties of having to perform before a less than attentive crowd, Tuck & Patti’s sole failing was a familiar one for them--a tendency to choose material that varies wildly in quality.