Piano | 1941-1995

Don Pullen came to jazz piano through gospel, R&B organ work and free improvisation before finding the approach that made him immediately recognisable: a percussive, physical technique that used the backs of his hands, knuckles and elbows alongside conventional fingering to generate dense tone clusters that belonged equally to gospel, free jazz and post-bop. Born in Roanoke, Virginia on Christmas Day 1941 into a preacher's family, he absorbed gospel as a child, studied briefly at Johnson C. Smith University before abandoning medicine, moved to Chicago to work with Muhal Richard Abrams, and settled in New York in the mid-1960s, where he backed R&B singers on organ, recorded free duets with Milford Graves and played briefly with Nina Simone. Charles Mingus hired him in 1973, and the two years Pullen spent in Mingus's final quintet, recording "Changes One" and "Changes Two" (Atlantic, 1975) with George Adams, Jack Walrath and Dannie Richmond, gave him his widest audience. He co-led a quartet with Adams from 1979 to 1988 that extended the Mingus group's inside-outside approach, and in the same year began a parallel role as co-leader of the 360 Degree Music Experience with drummer Beaver Harris. His Blue Note period, starting with "New Beginnings" (1988) alongside Gary Peacock and Tony Williams, produced some of his most focused work. In his final years he formed the African-Brazilian Connection, fusing jazz with West African and Brazilian traditions. Pullen died on 22 April 1995 in East Orange, New Jersey, aged 53.