Avant-garde jazz pianist and organist Don Pullen made a career out of making the experimental accessible. Born on Christmas Day, 1941, in Roanoke, Virginia, Pullen wasn’t afraid to weave a catchy melody into his complex compositions and improvisations -- sometimes played using the backs of his hands or his elbows -- and spent decades as both a band leader and valued sideman. Pullen left home to study medicine in North Carolina, but the pull of the music world was too great to resist. He took a detour to Chicago before landing in New York, and worked his way into the jazz scene in the late 1960s. The early ‘70s brought gigs playing with Nina Simone, Ruth Brown, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, but it was his tenure accompanying Charles Mingus that put him firmly on the jazz map.
He delivered his self-descriptive debut, Solo Piano Album, in 1975, and would release new albums at a steady clip for the rest of his life. In 1979 he teamed up with jazz woodwind player George Adams in the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet, a collaboration that spanned nearly a full decade. Initially their albums were only available in Europe, but by their 1986 album Breakthrough, the quartet had signed to Blue Note Records, which would be both the quartet and Pullen’s home for the rest of their respective careers. In the ‘90s he also spent time exploring Latin jazz with his band the African-Brazilian Connection, whose 1993 album Ode to Life made it to Number 5 on the Billboard jazz chart. Pullen died of lymphoma on April 22, 1995, just after completing his final record, Sacred Common Ground.
