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Hello all, we are now in March, 2012... 'RizMum' blog sure is getting slower now, but as promised I will try my best to keep on going... and its been awhile now since my last post (T_T) and to update this took me almost a year, anyhow, this will be my final year so you guys know how it is when the big "E" comes. So guys, see you in my next post and keep on SHREDDING!!!! And as always please feel free to drop a suggestion/ideas via e-mail, Thanks

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Tuck Andress (The Gap Band/Tuck & Patti)


Name: Tuck Andress
Born: 28th October, 1952 (Oklahoma, USA)

Profile: He is an American Jazz musician and a finger-picking guitarist. He is well known both as a solo artist and with his duo-group "Tuck & Patti", where he plays guitar while his wife Patti sings.

History: Tuck was raised in a family who love music. His father and older sister played piano where his father led a college jazz band and her sister Sharon studied classical piano. At the age of 7, Sharon taught him some few things on piano then later on he studied formal classical lessons until the age of 14.

Soon after that, he started a neighborhood band where he played the piano. It was during this period that Tuck decided he must play guitar. This was pre-Jimi Hendrix era, so his first playing was reminiscent of Chuck Berry with Beatles' melodic influences. His first electric guitar was a Ventures Mosrite with a Vox Pacemaker amplifier.

Tuck took a few lessons from Tommy Crooka, a brilliant Chet Atkins-inspired guitarist. However, Tuck was mostly a self taught guitarist. It was Jimi Hendrix's album that blown him away because of the power playing of Hendrix. And his other influence at that time was blues.

In 1970, Tuck enrolled in Stanford. The musical life there was rock bands, and he was still teaching himself Jazz music and Jimi Hendrix in every available moment. After the first quarter he dropped out and went to LA to rejoin some of the members of the band he had played with in high school. Thanks to Dean Parks he was given the opportunity to take over the guitar position for the 'Sonny and Cher TV show'. Tuck then left LA and went back in Stanford to study music while also going to Tulsa, where he played with "The Gap Band".

During this period, Tuck was studying and listening to every jazz album he could find. While in Stanford, Tuck had two years of weekly classical guitar lessons, first from Stanley Buetens, then Charles Ferguson. He already had a lot of classical experience from childhood and piano, a lot of left hand technique from playing electric and enough right hand technique to play the pieces he was learning. Therefore most of their focus was on expression, and learning to hear and experience one guitar as several different instruments at once. He also experimented with varying the volume and tone of each part independently. This would later become the most characteristic ingredient of the fingerstyle.

During the 70's, Tuck was well known in San Francisco jazz circles as a flat pick electric player. In 1978, he met Patti Cathcart and married shortly after following a trip together to India. It was only after he started playing with Patti that he developed his unorthodox but influential fingerstyle technique. Tuck's style of fingerstyle guitar playing exemplifies the art of simultaneously playing a bassline, chords, and melody.

Currently, Tuck is giving guitar lessons and supporting his students in discovering their own direction in music. His way of teaching is very unique, because he try to restrain himself from the natural tendency to overload people with materials.

Influences: Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Chet Atkins, Tommy Crook, BB. King, Albert King, Freddie King, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Michael Bloomfield, Steve Hickerson, Jim Byfield, Tommy Tripplehorn, Wes Montgomery, George Benson, Miles Davis, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones

Axology: 1953 Gibson L-5 and 1949 Gibson L-5

Signature song(s): Little Wing and Europa (both songs are covered, originally by Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana respectively)

Link(s):

http://www.tuckandpatti.com/ (Tuck & Patti official website)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ3Z5cL4zCs&feature=player_embedded#!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M56QwDjE6PQ&feature=PlayList&p=C615115AEBD6D088&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=60

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