‘Dallas’ star Patrick Duffy and ‘Happy Days’ fave Linda Purl make beautiful music together

Patrick Duffy and Linda Purl cuddled together like their four-year romance started just last week. When the couple plugged Duffy’s Dough, a sourdough-starter business with all net profits going to charity, they acted like kids opening their first lemonade stand. But the TV veterans were at their cutest when they talked about the Great American Songbook, which Purl will pull from when she performs Saturday at Crooners Supper Club.

Purl, who has played everything from Fonzie’s girlfriend on “Happy Days” to Pam’s mom on “The Office,” is spending more time these days on her cabaret act, a celebration of some of her favorite artists, like Doris Day and Anita O’Day. She’ll most likely be showcasing tunes from her new album, “This Could Be the Start.”

Purl and Duffy, best known as Bobby Ewing on “Dallas,” chatted in a Zoom call last month from the edge of a bed in their New York home.

Q: Linda, does your interest in jazz go way back?

Purl: It was the soundtrack to my childhood. I grew up in Japan. That’s where my dad’s job was. They didn’t miss America much, but they loved having the Great American Songbook on the turntable. A lot of Broadway and Sérgio Mendes. Every Sunday on Japanese television, curiously, “The Andy Williams Show” was on. All the greats, Rosemary Clooney, Anita O’Day, Tony Bennett.

Q: Kids can go one of two ways. They can embrace their parents’ music or rebel against it.

Purl: I loved it. The more jazz, the better. Also, Japan was crazy for it. In the early ‘60s, there was a huge interest in all things Western. Jazz was like crack over there. It personified the freedom and outrageousness and ambition of America.

Q: Patrick, did you also listen to that kind of music growing up?

Duffy: I was raised in Montana. Once a year, my parents would go to Las Vegas for a week, specifically to hear Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. They’d gamble and get drunk and wind their way back to Montana. I got half of that and the other half was honky-tonk on the jukebox.

Q: When you’re a kid in Montana, do you have to keep it a secret that you like Broadway tunes?

Duffy: The tap shoes gave it away.

Q: Can you carry a tune, Patrick?

Purl: Yes, he can.

Duffy: I couldn’t hit a note with a snow shovel. I know my limitations.

Q: There was never a musical episode of “Dallas”?

Duffy: The two things you never do on a show like that is you never sing and you never dance. And I danced, unfortunately. We’re supposed to be at a disco. They cut the music off when we were shooting, so I had to dance without it. You feel so stupid and you end up looking the same way you feel.

Q: Do you two have a song that you have a special connection to?

Duffy: “You Fascinate Me So.” There’s a lyric in it that goes, “from your eyebrow to your toe.” She changes it sometimes to “from your shoulder to your toe.” That’s a reference to one of our first meetings.

Q: How did you two meet?

Duffy: We had been orbiting around each other as business acquaintances for 50 years. Then we met just before the coronavirus hit at a celebrity thing. For months we communicated online, overcoming all that initial relationship stuff. By the time I jumped into the car and drove to her doorstep in Colorado, we had crossed so many hurdles.

Q: What do you two listen to around the house?

Purl: In the mornings, it’s classical. Then right around tea time or cocktail hour, it’s jazz.

Q: Were there artists that you introduced each other to?

Purl: Kurt Elling for Patrick. I’m crazy for him. Patrick has introduced me to westerns.

Duffy: The two that I was most eager to share was “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and “The Wild Bunch.” And “Tombstone.” Part of my love for westerns comes from my heritage but it’s the same pure storytelling that her music has. It’s unvarnished and accessible to everybody. That’s why “Dallas” was such a hit, that crossover feeling of comfort.

Q: Speaking of westerns, Linda did a terrific job in the miniseries “Young Pioneers,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter that was based on some incidents that happened in Minnesota.

Purl: That’s the show Patrick turned down!

Duffy: I was offered the part of playing her husband. I turned it down and took “Dallas” instead. It was a crap shoot at the time.

Q: Patrick, we lost Suzanne Somers last year. What was it like working with her on “Step by Step”?

Duffy: She was one of the smartest people in terms of managing her career and understanding the business of television. She and her husband, Alan, were the perfect couple. She used to refer to herself as “Alan’s Suitcase Full of Ties.” Alan would pull up, open the suitcase and out comes Suzanne Somers to sell perfume, books, kitchen utensils, ThighMaster. After her career tanked, she went to Las Vegas to reinvent herself. Alan said you have to end every show with “America the Beautiful” because then they could advertise standing ovations at every show. We became absolute best friends. Larry Hagman was my best friend on “Dallas.” She became my Larry.

Q: Are you two still doing “The Bold and the Beautiful” together?

Duffy: Our characters are not dead yet.

Q: And as we know from “Dallas,” killing off a character doesn’t mean they are finished. You’re living proof.

Duffy: I’m dying proof.

When: 7 p.m. Sat.

Where: Crooners Supper Club, 6161 Hwy. 65 NE., Fridley.

Tickets: $35-$45. croonersmn.com