Don Pullen

Don Gabriel Pullen was born on December 25, 1941, in Roanoke, Virginia, into a musical family that nurtured his gift at the keyboard from an early age. He learned piano as a boy and played in his local church, and he was drawn deeper into jazz by his cousin Clyde "Fats" Wright, a professional pianist. That grounding in gospel and the church would echo through every phase of the modern music he later made.

Pullen left Roanoke for Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina, intending a career in medicine, but the pull of music proved stronger. After absorbing the recordings of the era's great players and the ideas of Muhal Richard Abrams in Chicago, he settled in New York, where avant-garde saxophonist Giuseppi Logan brought him into the recording studio. His playing married free-jazz daring to blues and gospel roots, and his percussive technique — clusters struck with knuckles, the backs of the hands, even elbows — became instantly recognizable.

From 1973 to 1975 Pullen played in Charles Mingus's group, appearing on "Mingus Moves" (1973) and "Changes One" and "Changes Two" (both 1974). That exposure proved he was far more than a free player. In late 1979 he co-founded the celebrated quartet with saxophonist George Adams, joined by Dannie Richmond on drums and Cameron Brown on bass, a band that toured the world with unchanged personnel until Richmond's death in 1988.

In 1990 he formed the African Brazilian Connection, weaving jazz with African and Latin rhythms to wide acclaim. Don Pullen died of lymphoma on April 22, 1995, in East Orange, New Jersey, at fifty-three. His hands could thunder and sing in the same breath; may his music be honored as long as the piano is played.