Don Pullen -

Don Pullen (Dec. 25, 1941 — April 22, 1995) was an American avant-garde jazz pianist and organist from Roanoke, Va., who co-featured with drummer Milford Graves on a pair of 1966/67 live releases on SRP Records. Pullen played on albums by Charles Williams, Charles Mingus, and George Adams, then cut multiple bandleader titles Atlantic and Black Saint, including the 1976 release Capricorn Rising with saxist Sam Rivers.

Background

Don Gabriel Pullen was born Dec. 25, 1941, in Roanoke, Va., one of five children of Baptist minister Aubrey Spencer Pullen and singer and choir director Ernestine Marvely Rucker Pullen. Aubrey Pullen served Reed Street Baptist Church and also played guitar. Pullen started piano at age ten under neighbor Audrey Whitlock and cousin Clyde “Fats” Wright, a professional Roanoke pianist. He joined the choir at Harrison Elementary School and sang and played keyboards at Reed Street Baptist Church and Sweet Union Baptist Church, where Ernestine served as choir director.

Pullen expanded his musical interests at Booker T. Washington Junior High School and discovered jazz as a freshman at Lucy Addison High School. He visited local clubs to hear working musicians and joined the school choir, jazz club, and music-appreciation club. Pullen graduated near the top of the Lucy Addison class in 1959 and entered Johnson C. Smith College in Charlotte, N.C., on an academic scholarship. He pursued pre-medical studies while he took music electives and worked with Charlotte musicians who introduced him to recordings by Art Tatum, Ornette Coleman, and Eric Dolphy.

Pullen left the medical track in 1963 and moved to Chicago, where pianist Muhal Richard Abrams brought him into the Experimental Band and gave him private instruction. Pullen next moved to New Haven, Conn., where he worked briefly as a bookkeeper for Good Humor. He reached New York in 1964 knowing bassist Lew Worrell from Charlotte. Worrell introduced him to saxophonist Giuseppi Logan, drummer Milford Graves, saxophonist Albert Ayler, and drummer Sunny Murray.

Logan drafted Pullen into a quartet with Graves and bassist Eddie Gómez. They cut the 1964 ESP-Disk release The Giuseppi Logan Quartet, which marked Pullen’s first recorded credit. Pullen rejoined Logan and Graves at Town Hall on May 1, 1965, with bassist Reggie Johnson; ESP-Disk used “Mantu” and “Shebar” from the concert on the Logan album More. Pullen also worked on Hammond organ behind R&B singers as New York club work supplemented his free-jazz activity.

Graves invited Pullen to join a recital on April 30, 1966, at Yale University in New Haven. Pullen and Graves used concert proceeds to finance a pressing and formed Self-Reliance Productions (SRP) as the label. SRP issued two concert pieces later that year as In Concert at Yale University, the first album credited to Pullen.

Discography: