SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
SPRING, 2019
VOLUME SEVEN NUMBER ONE
WADADA LEO SMITH
Featuring the Musics and aesthetic Visions of:
CINDY BLACKMAN
(March 23-29)
RUTH BROWN
(March 30-April 5)
JOHN LEWIS
(April 6-12)
JULIUS EASTMAN
(April 13-19)
PUBLIC ENEMY
(April 20-26)
WALLACE RONEY
(April 27-May 3)
MODERN JAZZ QUARTET
(May 4-10)
DE LA SOUL
(May 11-17)
(May 11-17)
KATHLEEN BATTLE
(May 18-24)
WYNTON MARSALIS
(May 25-31)
(May 25-31)
RHIANNON GIDDENS
(June 1-7)
DON PULLEN
(June 8-14)Don Pullen
(1941-1995)
Artist Biography by Scott Yanow
Don Pullen
developed a surprisingly accessible way of performing avant-garde jazz.
Although he could be quite free harmonically, with dense, dissonant
chords, Pullen
also utilized catchy rhythms, so even his freest flights generally had a
handle for listeners to hang on to. The combination of freedom and
rhythm gave him his own unique musical personality.
Pullen, who came from a musical family, studied with Muhal Richard Abrams (with whom he played in the Experimental Band) and, in 1964, made his recording debut with Giuseppi Logan. In the 1960s, he recorded free duets with Milford Graves, led his own bands, and played organ with R&B groups, backing Big Maybelle and Ruth Brown, among others. Although he worked with Nina Simone (1970-1971) and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1974), Pullen became famous as the pianist with Charles Mingus' last great group (1973-1975). From 1979-1988, he co-led a notable inside/outside quartet with tenor saxophonist George Adams that was in some ways an extension of Mingus' band. In later years, Pullen led his African-Brazilian Connection and recorded with Kip Hanrahan, Roots, John Scofield, David Murray, Mingus Dynasty, and Jane Bunnett,
among others. His last project found the always searching pianist
seeking to fuse jazz with traditional Native American music. Although
his life was too short, Don Pullen
fortunately did make a fair amount of recordings as a leader, including
for Sackville (1974), Horo, Black Saint, Atlantic (his funky "Big
Alice" became a near-standard), and Blue Note.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/donpullen
Don Pullen developed an extended technique for the piano and a strikingly individual style, post-bop and modern, but retaining a strong feeling for the blues. He produced acknowledged masterworks of jazz in a range of formats and styles, crossing and mixing genres long before this became almost commonplace. By chance, unfortunately for his future commercial success if not for his musical development, his first contact on arriving on the New York scene was with the free players of the 1960s, with whom he recorded. It was some years later before his abilities in more straight ahead jazz playing, as well as free, were revealed to a larger audience. The variety in his music made him difficult to pigeonhole, but he always displayed a vitality that at first hearing could shock but would always engross and delight his audience.
Don Gabriel Pullen was born (on 25th December 1941 not in 1944 as sometimes said) and raised in Roanoke, Virginia, USA. Growing up in a musical family, he learned the piano at an early age, played and worked with the choir in his local church, and was heavily influenced by his cousin, professional jazz pianist Clyde “Fats” Wright. He had some lessons in classical piano but knew little of jazz, being mainly aware of church music and the blues. Don sought to play in a very fast style and managed to develop his own unorthodox technique allowing him to execute extremely fast runs while maintaining the melodic line.
Don left Roanoke for Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina to study for a medical career but soon he realised that his only true vocation was music. After playing with local musicians and being exposed for the first time to records of the major jazz musicians and composers he abandoned his medical studies. He set out to make a career in music, desirous of playing like Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy.
In 1964 he went to Chicago for a few weeks where he encountered Muhal Richard Abrams' philosophy of making music, then headed for New York, where he was soon introduced to avant-garde saxist Guiseppi Logan, and absorbed more of the philosophy of creative music. Logan invited Don to play piano on his two record dates, 'Guiseppi Logan'(October 1964) and 'More Guiseppi Logan' (May 1965) on ESP, both exercises in structured free playing. Although these were Guiseppi Logan's recordings, most critical attention was given to the playing of percussionist Milford Graves and the unknown Don Pullen with his astonishing mastery of his instrument.
Subsequently he and Milford Graves formed a duo and their piano and drums concert at Yale University in May 1966 was recorded. They formed their own independent SRP record label to publish the result as two LPs. These were the first records to bear Don Pullen's name, second to Milford's. Although not greatly known in the United States, these avant-garde albums were well received in Europe and most copies were sold there. These have never been reissued after the first run sold out.
Finding little money in playing avant-garde jazz, Don began to play the Hammond organ to extend his opportunities for work, transferring elements of his individual piano style to this instrument. During the remainder of the 1960s and early the 1970s, he played with his own organ trio in clubs and bars, worked as self- taught arranger for record companies, and accompanied various singers, including Arthur Prysock and Nina Simone.
He suffered at this time, and for a long time after, from two undeserved allegations; the first (despite his grounding in the church and blues) that he was purely a free player and thus unemployable in any other context, the second that he had been heavily influenced by Cecil Taylor or was a clone of Cecil Taylor, to whose playing Don's own bore a superficial resemblance. Don strenuously denied that he had any link with Cecil Taylor, stating that his own style had been developed in isolation before he ever heard of Cecil. But the assertion of Cecil's influence continued to the end of Don's life, and persists even to this day.
He appeared on no more commercial recordings until 1971 and 1972 when he played organ on three recordings by blues altoist Williams, one being issued under the title of a Pullen composition, “Trees And Grass And Things”. In 1973 drummer Roy Brooks introduced Don to bassist Charles Mingus, and after a brief audition he took over the vacant piano chair in the Mingus group; when a tenor saxophone player was needed, Don recommended George Adams; subsequently Dannie Richmond returned on drums; and these men, together with Jack Walrath on trumpet, formed the last great Mingus group.
Being part of the Mingus group and appearing at many concerts and on three Mingus studio recordings, 'Mingus Moves' (1973), 'Changes One' and 'Changes Two' (both 1974), gave great exposure to Don's playing and helped to persuade audiences and critics that Pullen was not just a free player. Two of his own compositions 'Newcomer' and 'Big Alice' were recorded on the 'Mingus Moves' session but 'Big Alice' was not released until a CD re- issue many years later. However musical disagreements with Mingus caused Don to leave the group in 1975. Don had always played piano with bass and drums behind him, feeling more comfortable this way, but in early 1975 he was persuaded to play a solo concert in Toronto. This was recorded and as 'Solo Piano Album' became the first record issued under Don's name alone. Among other pieces, it contains 'Sweet (Suite) Malcolm' declared a masterpiece by Cameron Brown, Don's long time associate of later years.
There was now growing awareness of Don's abilities but it was the European recording companies that were prepared to preserve it. In 1975 an Italian record company gave Don, George Adams and Dannie Richmond the opportunity to each make a recording under his own name. All three collaborated in the others' recordings. In the same year, Don made two further solo recordings in Italy for different record labels; 'Five To Go' and 'Healing Force', the latter being received with great acclaim. He became part of the regular seasonal tours of American musicians to Europe, playing in the avant-garde or free mode. In 1977, Don was signed by a major American jazz record company, Atlantic. This led to two records, the untypical 'Tomorrow's Promises' and the live 'Montreux Concert'. But after these, Don's association with Atlantic was terminated and he returned to European companies for three recordings under his own name or in partnership; 'Warriors', and 'Milano Strut' in '78 and 'The Magic Triangle' in '79. These, especially the startling 'Warriors' with its strong 30 minute title track, have remained in the catalogues over the years.
Meanwhile he recorded with groups led by Billy Hart (drums), Hamiet Bluiett, (baritone sax.), Cecil McBee (bass), Sunny Murray (drums) and Marcello Melis (bass). On the formation of the first Mingus Dynasty band Don occupied the piano chair and appeared on their recording 'Chair In The Sky' in 1979, but he soon left the band, feeling the music had diverged too far from Mingus' intentions. In late 1979 Don, George Adams and Dannie Richmond were booked to play as a quartet for a European tour of a few weeks duration. Don invited Cameron Brown to join them on bass. They were asked to bill themselves as a Mingus group but not wanting to be identified as mere copyists they declined and performed as the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet. They played more structured music than Don normally favoured, but the immediate rapport among them led to the group touring the world with unchanged personnel until the death of Dannie Richmond in early 1988. From very early in their first tour in 1979, and until 1985, the quartet made a dozen remarkable recordings for European labels, both studio and live. Of these, 'Earth Beams' (1980), 'Live At The Village Vanguard' (1983) and 'Decisions' (1984) provide typically fine examples of their work at that period. Although highly regarded in Europe, the quartet felt they were not well enough known in America so in 1986 they signed to record for the American Blue Note label for which they recorded 'Breakthrough' (1986) and 'Song Everlasting' (1987). Beginning the Blue Note contract with great hope of increased fame and success, (as shown by the title of their first Blue Note album) they became disillusioned by the poor availability of these two records. Although the power of their live concerts maintained their reputation as one of the most exciting groups ever seen, the music recorded for the Blue Note sessions was at first deemed 'smoother' than on their European recordings, and took time to achieve the same high reputation.
After the death of Dannie Richmond the quartet fulfilled their remaining contracted engagements with a different drummer and then disbanded in mid 1988. Their music, usually original compositions by Don, George and Dannie, had ranged from blues, through ballads, to post- bop and avant-garde. The ability of the players to encompass all these areas, often within one composition, removed any sameness or sterility from the quartet format. Except for the early recordings on the vanished Horo label, their European recordings remained regularly available, unlike those made for Blue Note.
During the life of the Quartet, Don also made a duo recording with George Adams 'Melodic Excursions' (1982) and made three recordings under his own name, two further solo albums, the acclaimed 'Evidence Of Things Unseen' (1983) and 'Plays Monk' (1984), then with a quintet, another highly praised recording 'The Sixth Sense' (1985). He also recorded with (alphabetically) Hamiet Bluiett; Roy Brooks, the drummer who introduced him to Mingus; Jane Bunnett; Kip Hanrahan; Beaver Harris; Marcello Melis; and David Murray.
All Don's future recordings under his own name would now be for Blue Note. On 16th December 1988 he went into the studio with Gary Peacock (bass) and Tony Williams (drums) to make his first trio album 'New Beginnings', which astonished even those familiar with his work and became widely regarded as one of the finest trio albums ever recorded. He followed this in 1990 with another trio album 'Random Thoughts', in somewhat lighter mood, this time with James Genus (bass) and Lewis Nash (drums).
In late 1990 Don added a new element to his playing and his music with the formation of his African Brazilian Connection ('ABC'). This featured, as well as Don, Carlos Ward (alto sax), Nilson Matta (bass), Guilherme Franco and Mor Thiam (percussion) in a group which mixed African and Latin rhythms with Jazz. Their exciting first album “Kele Mou Bana” was released in 1991. Their second, but very different, album of 1993, 'Ode To Life' was a tribute to George Adams, who had died on 14th November 1992, containing Don's heartfelt and moving composition in George's memory 'Ah George We Hardly Knew Ya'. A third album 'Live .... Again' recorded in July 1993 at the Montreux festival, but not released until 1995. This featured 'Ah George...' and other songs from their previous albums, in somewhat extended versions. Don achieved more popular and commercial success with this group than with any other. In 1993 'Ode To Life' was fifth on the U.S. Billboard top jazz album chart.
During the last few years of his too short life, Don toured with his trio, with his African Brazilian Connection, as a solo artist, and with groups led by others, making much fine music, but sadly not enough records. The greatest loss to his admirers was that although his solo playing seemed to grow in power, he was never invited to record another solo album. Meanwhile he made important contributions to concerts and recordings of groups led by others, such as (alphabetically) Jane Bunnett (notably their fine Duo album 'New York Duets); Bill Cosby(!); Kip Hanrahan; David Murray (on organ, the best recorded example of his organ style being on Murray's 1991 'Shakill's Warrior'); Maceo Parker (on organ); Ivo Perelman; Jack Walrath (again on organ). He also toured and recorded with the group 'Roots' from its inception.
Don's final project was a work combining the music of his African Brazilian Connection (extended by Joseph Bowie on trombone) with a choir and drums of Native Americans. In 1994 Don was diagnosed with the lymphoma which eventually ended his life but, despite this, he put great physical effort into completing the this important and deeply felt composition. In early March 1995 he played on the recording 'Sacred Common Ground', displaying all his usual power although being but a few weeks away from his untimely death, returning as always to his heritage of the blues and the church. Unable himself to play at the live premiere, his place at the piano was taken by D D Jackson, with whom Don discussed the music from his hospital bed shortly before his death. He died on 22nd April 1995.
Don composed many pieces with melodies and rhythms which linger in the mind, often they were portraits or memories of people he knew. All were published by his own company Andredon but because he himself for a long time suffered from neglect musically so did many of his compositions. His most well known are the humorous 'Big Alice' (for an imaginary fan), the incredible 'Double Arc Jake' (for his son and Rahsaan Roland Kirk), the passionate 'Ode To Life' (for a friend), and the aforementioned lament 'Ah George We Hardly Knew Ya'. Occasionally he wrote pieces with a religious feeling, such as 'Gratitude' and 'Healing Force', or to highlight the plight of Afro-Americans such as 'Warriors', 'Silence = Death, and 'Endangered Species: African American Youth'. Following the assassination of Afro-American activist Malcolm X, Don had written a suite dedicated to Malcolm's memory but this required more instrumental resources than a normal jazz group provides, and only the piano parts of this were ever recorded. Except for the 'Plays Monk' album, Don almost exclusively featured his own compositions on his own recordings, until his time with the African Brazilian Connection. His compositions are well represented on the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet recordings, but such compositions by Don which were recorded by others, were usually performed by those who had known and worked with him.
Although Don was able to play the piano in almost any style, (the attribute that had made him so important to the wide-ranging music of Mingus) and sometimes gave the impression that there were two pianists at the keyboard, he caused most astonishment by his ability to place extremely precise singing runs or glissandi over heavy chords, reminiscent of traditional blues, while never losing contact with the melodic line. His technique for creating these runs, where he seemed to roll his right hand over and over along the keys, received much comment from critics, was studied by pianists, and heavily filmed and investigated, but could never be totally explained, even by Don who had developed it. His piano technique can be seen on the DVDs 'Mingus At Montreux 1975' and on 'Roots Salutes The Saxophones'. But it is better not to concentrate too much on his technique, especially now that he is gone from among us, and to pay attention to his depth of feeling and the intensity of improvisations, whether these were suggested by the song itself or engendered by the moment. It is easy to forget that those who come to love his music from his records may be totally unaware of his playing method. Even at his concerts, only a minority of the audience would be fully able to see his hands moving along the keyboard and be aware of exactly how he revealed the emotional outpourings of his soul.
Don Pullen, like many other of greatest jazz musicians, had given his life to the music and was greatly missed after his death. Several musicians wrote songs as personal tributes to his memory, including Jane Bunnett, Cameron Brown, D D Jackson, and David Murray.
David Murray and D D Jackson made a whole album 'The Long Goodbye' dedicated to Don.
In 2005 Mosaic issued a set of four long unavailable Blue Note recordings, 'Breakthrough' and 'Song Everlasting' by the 'The Don Pullen/George Adams Quartet, and 'New Beginning' and 'Random Thoughts' by Don's own trio.
Source: Mike Bond
http://www.donpullen.de/collect/coda.htm
Don Pullen: An Interview by Vernon Frazer HOME
The following interview was published first in the jazz magazine "coda", October 1976, Toronto, Canada. Photographs by Bill Smith.
Vernon Frazer: In 1966 I heard you play on a Giuseppi Logan album and read several reviews of your performances and recordings with Milford Graves. After that, I didn't see your name mentioned until about 1972, when you joined Charles Mingus' band. What did you do during those years? Apparently you received very little publicity.
Don Pullen: During that time the music critics were especially adverse to what they called the New Music, Avant Garde or whatever. After the period with Milford Graves, I worked with a trio around New York, had an organ group and played for a lot of singers. I just made it any way I could and still stay in music.
V.F.: How did you join Mingus?
D.P.: Roy Brooks recommended me. Mingus just called me and I made the gig.
V.F.: And you stayed with him for three years?
D.P.: Approximately.
V.F.: Why did you decide to leave Mingus?
D.P.: Personal reasons. It was just time to go, time to leave.
V.F.: Do you want to be more specific ?
D.P.: I would rather not, right now.
V.F.: During the time you played with him, did Mingus influence you in any way?
D.P.: No. Before I met Mingus, I was playing virtually the same way I play now. My way of playing had to be a little more contained with him because of the form of the tunes, the changes and so forth. I had to stay within a certain framework to do justice to his tunes, you see. lf I had ventured to play them the way I think they should be played, there might have been a little conflict.
V.F.: What have you been doing since you left his band?
D.P.: I've been doing a few things. I've recorded for an Italian label, a European label, done solo concerts up in Canada. I've worked with a trio here in New York, using Bobby Battle on drums and Alex Blake, whenever he's available, on bass.
V.F.: In the mid-sixties you and Milford Graves recorded, produced and distributed an album by yourselves. Why did you choose this over the more conventional avenues of recording?
D.P.: For awhile, the critics and record producers were turning thumbs down on the New Music and the New Musicians. Milford and I were having difficulty getting recorded, as I am even today. We weren't getting any play from the White Establishment. They were only recording those they felt were more Establishment-inclined, so we just decided to do it ourselves. During that time, you see, the lack Revolution was happening. The social and political aspects made it just about the right time for us to go into this venture. Musicians were thinking about controlling their own music. We weren't going to sit back and wait on the Man to say, "Well, here. Take this crumb." We said, "We'll do it ourselves." That was the impetus. We did a concert at Yale, decided to record it and try to do it ourselves, to expose ourselves. And we were successful to a very big degree, you know. We sold a lot of records, we got our name out there. We achieved what we set out to do.
V.F.: Were any other opportunities for recording available at that time, possibly through ESP Records or through Bill Dixon, when he was at Savoy?
D.P.: I came to New York, I think, a little bit after Bill Dixon and the Savoy thing. I did record two albums for ESP with Giuseppi Logan but I never did an album for him under my own name. Bernard Stollman, by that time, had - has even now- a lot of good music. He recorded everybody, all the cats. Some of it he released, some of it he didn't.
V.F.: When you put out your own record, did you hope to attract the attention of a major Jazz label?
D.P.: Not really. We were mainly concerned with trying to build our own company and eventually control our own music. When I traveled with Mingus and even now, wherever I go, people always ask about the record. Milford and I get letters now, every day, from people asking where they can get the record. We only did two. I think eventually we're going to have to reissue both albums. One avenue might be to lease the masters to a larger company. There's a lot of headaches, a lot of trouble, in trying to take care of the business and play also. lt would be easier for another company to put it on the market.
V.F.: How did you handle the distribution of the record?
D.P.: We went into mail order. We got some play from the music magazines Downbeat, Jazz, all the major Jazz magazines. Different music critics would write about, you know, and people would write in and ask for it. Some distributors in Europe and Japan asked for five hundred or a thousand copies. But in the U.S. we never had any distribution to speak of. We sold more records in Europe and Japan than we did in the States.
V.F.: lt seems you've recorded more outside the States than you have inside.
D.P.: Yeah. I've got three in Europe and one in Canada in 1975, you know, and can't get a record date in America.
V.F.: Why can't you get a record date here?
D.P.: I have no idea. I don't think they like me here. I think they're trying to run me out of the country. (Laughs) I don't know, man. I really don't know. I have certain opinions I might venture, but I really can't say.
V.F.: Would you put out your own record now, if you felt it was necessary?
D.P.: If I felt it was necessary, I would do it. Like I said, I really don't want the headache of doing it. I enjoy the work that's involved, but I would prefer to let somebody else do it while I concentrate on the music. The machinery that's necessary, the distribution, is a major problem with any venture such as producing. You have to have world-wide distribution. It means collecting your money - all this takes a big operation to be really big, you know? If necessary, I do it on a small level - you know, myself. And I'm almost to that point now. I've done it before, so I can do it again.
V.F.: Although independent recording has received less publicity than it did during the sixties, it seems that, in recent years, the number of musicians who release their own work on their own labels has increased. Do you think these musicians are acting on the same motivation as you and Graves?
D.P.: Yeah. The same things. In fact, a lot of the cats that are trying to produce their own records today come to us from time to time for advice, to see how we did it. They're doing it their own way, but I think Milford and I, during the sixties, were pioneers in that aspect of doing it yourself. Of course, other musicians have done it before: Sun Ra, Mingus. But during that time, we were the youngest cats out there and it was like phenomenal for two young dudes to be doing it, you see. So it inspired other cats to say, "Yeah, we'll try it too."
V.F.: Over the past decade, what changes do you think have taken place in the New Music?
D.P.: Looking back and comparing then with now, I don't see that real drive. Like, cats were I hate to just say "into it", but that's the best I can explain - they were into it. It was like a community, you know, even though they might be separated for miles. Nowadays, I think they're going more towards the Jazz-Rock - that bullshit, you know - trying to sound like Miles. There's no real influence, no leadership, out there. Which is one reason why I think they won't record me. If they ever give me a chance, I'm gonna lay something heavy on 'em and they really don't want anything like that - too heavy - out. The people in power always say, "Well, people don't want to hear this" or "People don't understand it." They're always looking down on people. I think one of the prime purposes of music is enlightenment, to elevate people. Music is supposed to elevate the person. If you always play down to people, they don't move anywhere. For instance, different things I was doing in the sixties I hear cats in Rock doing now. But in the sixties, they said it was nonsense.
V.F.: They didn't understand it at the time.
D.P.: Exactly. And they said, "People can't understand it, they'll never understand it. " But they're doing it. I'm playing basically the same way I've been playing all my life and more and more people are digging it. But what if I had stopped back then? If nobody ever does anything new, if nobody tries to advance the music, then everything is going to become dead. Everything is going to become stagnant. Everybody was talking about "Jazz is Dead " because there was no innovation, there were no new things out. But there were. It was happening, but it wasn't being given to the people. It wasn't being exposed at all. So they said, "Well, it's dead." Damn right it's dead, if you keep playing something over and over for twenty years.
V.F.: The media made it appear dead, although a lot was really going on.
D.P.: Yeah. That's what was happening when the so-called Revolution in Music was happening. They called it the "October Revolution". They used the term "revolution" because there was a call for something new. When I first came to New York in 1964, Bill Dixon had a club - on 96th Street, I think. He was doing that thing and I was there every night. I heard them cats and I said, "Goddamn! What is this shit? What is this here?" That was what I had been looking for, searching for. People used to say I played strange. I really didn't know anybody else who was playing, you know? So when I went there I had heard Eric Dolphy and Ornette - they were the two main influences on me - but aside from them, I didn't know there were many other musicians playing. I said, "Well, this is it. I'm not alone"
V.F.: During that period, the New Musicians were attempting to develop an aesthetic which didn't necessarily require or follow a preconceived structure -
D.P.: That's not true. The critics used to say that because they didn't know what the structure was, what the form was. The form was different, something they never heard, so they said there was no form. They didn't know what it was. On a higher level there is a communication among musicians that gives its own form to what you're doing, you see. This is why I don't like to play with a lot of people. If I do, I like for everybody's head to be in the same direction. That way you can create on that higher level. Like I said, the form, the structure, everything was there. People weren't used to hearing it and so they said there was none. Now, one critic wrote about me and said I didn't have one touch of rhythm at all. He said I didn't have no melody, no rhythm, no nothing. It was dumbass! (Laughs.) He didn't know.
V.F.: Would it be more accurate to say that the New Musicians used a wide variety of structures, sometimes within the same piece, to enhance their expression?
D.P.: Yeah. They used to call it freedom because you were free to do whatever you wanted to do. But that wasn't really now in the sense that, for instance, Mingus' compositions, though from a different era, have always been free. Duke's were like that. Duke used whatever he felt that he should use to express whatever ideas he had, so that was really nothing new. It was just a different way of expressing the same thing. You see, there are no limits to music, to anything. The only limitation is your own mind. If you say, "Well, this is what I want to do," then stop there, that's as far as it's gonna go. But somebody else is gonna say, "No, I can take it a little bit farther than that." Everything builds, one on top of the other, you know. It's like a stack, one up. You just stop whenever you go as high as you want to go. That's the end of it. There's one area of music that if you do get into is very dangerous for your life, but I don't want to get into that. I really don't know much about it.
V.F.: In what ways do you feel your own music has evolved over the years?
D.P.: It's difficult for me to discuss my own music because I've never really satisfied myself. I know that I have done some good things. I think the solo album I did for Sackville is good. I like that more than anything else I've done. But now I don't even like that. I can't say because I'm continually growing. What I played five minutes ago, I won't like the next five.
V.F.: Do you prefer to play solo or with a group?
D.P.: At this point, I enjoy both. When I come out with a group, I do parts of a performance solo and parts of it with the group. I play differently with a group than I do solo. Solo gives me a different kind of freedom of expression than with a group. For example, Song Played Backwards. I started at the end and played it backwards.
V.F.: What was the song?
D.P.: I didn't have a title for it. I played it by myself, you know, so I just...played it backwards. (Laughs.) There are different ways of doing things. I just felt like doing it, so I did it. When I solo, it's only my mind. You can do anything you want to do with a group, you know. Like I said, you set your own limitations. When I play with a group, I have another kind of freedom of expression because I have the other minds, the other vibrations of the musicians working, you see. There's interplay. You have to consider them and they have to consider you. So a group adds another aspect to the music. I enjoy both, you know, and it doesn't matter to me if I play solo or with somebody else.
V.F.: Have you performed any of your solo pieces in a group setting?
D.P.: No, I haven't. Some of them are not adaptable to groups. At least, I haven't figured out a way to do it. I imagine I can. Some I just like to play solo. Richard's Tune is one of my favorites. It's adaptable to group or trio or whatever, but I prefer to play it solo. The Malcolm piece is part of a suite which has seven or eight different...tunes, I guess you'd call them. The only one that I can play solo is the one I recorded, Malcolm, Memories and Gunshots. That's the only one that's adaptable to piano. The rest of it is integrated into the full wide spectrum - small group, strings, full orchestra.
V.F.: Then you've written for large ensembles, also?
D.P.: Yeah, I used to be Arranger and Conductor for King Records a few years back. That was also in the sixties. Not jazz things, but for singers: Arthur Prysock, Irene Reid.
V.F.: In recent years, jazz musicians have recorded solo piano albums more frequently than they have in the past. Why do you think this is happening?
D.P.: I really don't know, but it's nothing new. Tatum did it. Monk has done it. Duke. On one cut I remember, Eric Dolphy played solo saxophone - God Bless The Child, I believe. Solo isn't really new, you know. My cousin, who was a big influence on my playing - Clyde "Fats" Wright used to tell me that unless you could play solo, you couldn't play at all. I think every piano player has to. If you sit home and practise, you develop a way of playing solo, anyway. I think more people are becoming aware of the beauty of just piano alone. Classical music, you know, has solo concerts, so it's not strange for jazz to do the same thing. It's always been there.
V.F.: Do you think the increase in solo piano recordings could be, in part, a reaction to the increased use of electronic keyboard instruments?
D.P.: I don't know. I don't deal with electronics too much. I don't know anything about them, really. I've played electric piano, but I think all those things will pass, you know. It's not real, it's not the real thing. I break up electric pianos, so I can't play them. I have to be very careful with them or else they won't last ten minutes. My own piano is in such bad shape, man, that I've been trying to tune it myself. I'm ashamed to call a tuner over here to try to fix it. So I need something sturdy.
V.F.: An electric piano wouldn't lend itself to your percussive style of playing.
D.P.: It doesn't lend itself at all. It doesn't have the sound, the overtones - I make use of overtones. The electric piano. Well, there can't be. There might be electronic ones. But I don't think I want to get into that.
V.F.: In your solo pieces, you sometimes play the strings inside the piano. Did you learn this formally or pick it up on your own?
D.P.: I did it on my own. My technique is my own. I don't know if anybody can teach you to play strings. You have to do it yourself, find out where they are and play them.
V.F.: When you improvise, do you consciously move "inside" or "outside", as the terms are customarily used?
D.P.: No, I wouldn't say so. It depends on the particular composition that I'm playing. If I'm playing a tune with a set structure, say the structure is "in" and I want to move "out", then I don't consciously say that I want to move "out". I try to let the flow of the music direct me. If you feel it's going in a particular direction, don't force it. Other times it might be necessary to force it in some direction, whatever it is. If you don't feel like you're getting what you want out of the music, then you have to force it. We have to get out of the concept of "in " and "out ". I might say, "This cat is out, " but I don't mean it in the sense of "as a way of playing". There's no such thing as playing "in " or "out ". It's a way of playing. Period. It's just what you feel, how you're playing. You have to let it move you, instead of moving yourself. There's no feeling of what to do next, or whatever. You don't really know what you're going to do next.
V.F.: A number of your compositions appear simple in their melodic content, in that a listener can easily sing the melodies. How does this relate to the complexity of your improvisation? Some musicians use relatively simple compositions because the simplicity allows them more freedom to improvise.
D.P.: Well, the majority of my compositions are about people that I know. Dee Arr is Danny Richmond. Richard is Richard Abrams. And Traceys of Daniel that's my daughter, Tracey Danielle. Melodies are moods, rhythms and feelings that remind me of certain people. I find that within people there's just one thing and that's very simple. Their ways of acting, the things they do, the way they go through certain changes, gets complex. But, basically everything is the same. We come from one source, you know. So that's the way my little melodies come out. And I find that I'm not that complex anyway, so far as music is concerned. Simplicity is very difficult to achieve - to play simple, I mean. Mal Waldron is a good friend of mine. I remember I was at school when I first heard him. It was amazing to me how he could take about four or five notes and play nothing but those four or five, or just play within a scale, and just weave those notes in and out, in and out and still keep building. He's a master of simplicity and there's so much beauty in simplicity. But I can think of a person and play something that would remind me of him. I do things like that.
V.F.: In the sixties, your playing was frequently compared to Cecil Taylor's -
D.P.: That's only dumb critic's talk! When I came to New York, I didn't even know who Cecil Taylor was. In fact, I met Cecil three times over the last ten years and I have never yet heard him play.
V.F.: Not even on records?
D.P.: I've heard one or two records by him. One of them, I think, was at Bill Smith's house in Canada. The last time I saw Cecil was in Switzerland, at Montreux. We talked just about all day, hung out all day together. I got to know him a little better then, but this was about ten years later, you see. He's aware that I don't play like him and I'm aware that he doesn't play like me, either. We appreciate each other, we dig each other as people. I used to purposely avoid him because when I came to New York the first review was, "Don Pullen sounds like Cecil Taylor." If the critics said anything about me, Cecil's name had to be mentioned. Now, I didn't know who this motherfucker was, never even seen him. If he was playing somewhere, I wouldn't go there because I didn't want to sound like anybody. I was insecure in my position because he's been established for twenty or thirty years and I supposedly sounded like him. So I said, 'Whoever he is, I'm gonna stay away from him so that I can be free to develop my own way and go my own way." If I sounded that much like him, as young as I was, then I might have been influenced by him.
V.F.: Which would have been dangerous for your future growth.
D.P.: Yes, of course. So l stayed away from him. As I became secure in my position, that I could play my own way, it didn't matter. So now I consider him a friend and I still don't know what he sounds like. From what I've heard of him, we might have the same way of doing things. But if you play C-D-E-F-G and I play the same thing, it's going to sound different. People haven't tuned their ears to hear the difference between your C and my C. Or maybe they're not taking the time to hear the difference. Cecil's background and my background are so different that we could never possibly sound alike.
V.F.: What is your background? l know Cecil graduated from the New England Conservatory. Their catalogue lists him as one of their Distinguished Alumni although, from what I've read about him, he hated the place.
D.P.: (Laughs.) I imagine he would. He's a free spirit and a very beautiful person. So I imagine that they probably did give him hell. But my background was the Rhythm and Blues, chitterlings circuit and the church.
V.F.: Did you have any conservatory training?
D.P.: No.
V.F.: Any lessons?
D.P.: Oh yeah. The lady across the street was a piano teacher. But that was it. I went to school to become a doctor, but split after awhile. The pull of music, the influence of music, was too great. School was just a diversionary tactic. I knew all along I was going into music. So here I am: got my shingle hanging out and an eviction notice on my door.
V.F.: Some musicians who play Fusion music -
D.P.: Fusion music?
V.F.: Yeah. The Jazz-Rock that Miles is doing, for example.
D.P.: Oh, that's what they call it?
V.F.: That's the most common label for it.
D.P.: Oh yeah?... Fusion music.
V.F.: The fusion of Jazz and Rock.
D.P.: Oh, I see. Okay...Con-fusion.
V.F.: (Laughs.) Anyway, some of the musicians playing Fusion music have openly stated that they're playing to make money so they can survive, as well as invest in the equipment and facilities required to make their music. Do you think you could alter your style to achieve greater commercial success?
D.P.: I could do it easily. It's hard, man, when you see cats out there making a whole bunch of money playin' shit while you're trying to elevate the music and by elevating the music elevate yourself. It's a feather in your cap when you are being true to the music. So it's sort of difficult. I imagine anybody might be tempted to do something. But with me it's only lasted for a minute because I wouldn't be able to live unless I got some sort of satisfaction from the music that I was playing. I would probably die right quick, so there's only one way for me to go. I have to be true to myself and play the music that I feel I'm supposed to play. Otherwise, there's no purpose to it. What have I been doing all these years if I'm gonna sit down and play some shit, some garbage, you know? Then I've wasted half my life because I don't need training, I don't need thought, I don't need mental abilities, I don't need insight, I don't need creative power - I don't need any of that, you dig? I could just sit down and bullshit! If the cats that are doing it feel that's where they belong, then I've got no criticism of them. But a lot of it's more business and greed than anything else.
V.F.: It's difficult for you to get your music heard. What do you do to survive?
D.P.: What do I do? I do the same thing I'm doing now, just make it from day to day and keep my music on a high level. If I take care of the music, it'll take care of me. Then I go out, try to help myself. I don't just lay on my ass. I do whatever is necessary. If I believe in the music like I say I do, then I've got to do something to make the music heard. There's different ways of doing it. But I've managed these years. I might take a gig at the corner bar, playing some funk or fatback, whatever you want to call it, to survive, all for the music. There are bad periods in everyone's life, you know, periods when nothing is happening or happening the way you would like it to. But if you endure those periods, your playing becomes that much stronger. You learn from those periods, gain strength from them and the strength you gain comes out in your music. If you play truthful music, it's going to prevail, no matter what. My music is too good to be ignored, so I'll do whatever I have to do to keep it on a high level and get it out to the people. Like I said, if I take care of the music, the music will take care of me.
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/24/obituaries/don-pullen-pianist-53-dies-distinctive-improviser-in-jazz.html
The cause was lymphoma, said Don Lucoff, a publicity representative for Blue Note Records.
Mr. Pullen was one of the most percussive pianists in jazz. His improvisations brimmed with splashed clusters, hammered notes and large two-handed chords. His solos often started out traditionally, with single note lines articulating a composition's harmony, then grew richer with bright explosions of tones. Mr. Pullen used the backs of his hands, or occasionally an elbow; he managed to take techniques from the modern European classical repertory and use them in his music without ever losing a jazz sensibility. Mr. Pullen's importance lies in part in his ability to synthesize so many different forms of expression.
Although Mr. Pullen began as a church pianist and became interested in the work of Art Tatum, he was quickly accepted into the ranks of the avant-garde of the 1960's. In 1965 in New York, he worked with Giuseppe Logan and played for a series of rhythm-and-blues singers including Big Maybelle, Ruth Brown and Arthur Prysock, often using the organ instead of the piano. But his main allegiance was to the free jazz of the era, and he regularly performed with the drummer Milford Graves in the mid-1960's.
In 1973 he began a two-year association with Charles Mingus, who helped introduce Mr. Pullen's style to a wider audience. He was heard on two important albums, "Changes 1" and "Changes 2." Mr. Mingus prized what Mr. Pullen had to offer: a church-driven power, a blues sensibility and a harmonic sophistication.
In the late 1970's and early 80's, he and the drummer Beaver Harris led a rocking group, 360 Degree Music Experience, which included steel drums and the powerful saxophonist Ricky Ford. And in 1979, with the saxophonist and Mingus alumnus George Adams, he started a group that recorded 10 albums over the next decade. Mr. Pullen had begun his own career as a soloist in 1975, recording for the Canadian Sackville label. In the 1970's he recorded for Atlantic Records, among others, and in 1985 he released an exceptional album, "The Sixth Sense," for the Italian label Black Saint. He also regularly worked in clubs.
He continued with a series of stunning albums for Blue Note Records. Some were trio recordings that allowed Mr. Pullen to draw on all his experiences as a musician; the church, rhythm-and-blues, pop and jazz all came out in them, as did his extraordinarily inventive and distinct improvisational style. And he recorded three albums of Brazilian-influenced jazz. Mr. Pullen was still recording and performing several weeks ago, and in early March he finished his last recording, due out next year.
He is survived by his companion, Jana Haimsohn; three sons, Andre, Don and Keith; a daughter, Tracey; his father, Aubrey; a sister, Doris; three brothers, Keith, Aubrey and James, and a granddaughter.
A version of this obituary; biography appears in print on April 24, 1995, on Page B00012 of the National edition with the headline: Don Pullen, Pianist, 53, Dies; Distinctive Improviser in Jazz.
Pianist Don Pullen (1941–1995) was known for his melodic brilliance, swirling chords and glissandos; his kinetic, cascading piano attack could ignite any band. He gained his first experiences playing African-American church music and R&B, and his career took off when he joined Charles Mingus' band in the 1970s. He went on to form his own quartet with saxophonist George Adams.
In this 1989 episode of Piano Jazz, Pullen performs one of his original compositions, "Jana's Delight." He and host Marian McPartland get together for "All The Things You Are."
Originally broadcast in the fall of 1989.
SET LIST:
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/donpullen
Don Pullen
Don Pullen developed an extended technique for the piano and a strikingly individual style, post-bop and modern, but retaining a strong feeling for the blues. He produced acknowledged masterworks of jazz in a range of formats and styles, crossing and mixing genres long before this became almost commonplace. By chance, unfortunately for his future commercial success if not for his musical development, his first contact on arriving on the New York scene was with the free players of the 1960s, with whom he recorded. It was some years later before his abilities in more straight ahead jazz playing, as well as free, were revealed to a larger audience. The variety in his music made him difficult to pigeonhole, but he always displayed a vitality that at first hearing could shock but would always engross and delight his audience.
Don Gabriel Pullen was born (on 25th December 1941 not in 1944 as sometimes said) and raised in Roanoke, Virginia, USA. Growing up in a musical family, he learned the piano at an early age, played and worked with the choir in his local church, and was heavily influenced by his cousin, professional jazz pianist Clyde “Fats” Wright. He had some lessons in classical piano but knew little of jazz, being mainly aware of church music and the blues. Don sought to play in a very fast style and managed to develop his own unorthodox technique allowing him to execute extremely fast runs while maintaining the melodic line.
Don left Roanoke for Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina to study for a medical career but soon he realised that his only true vocation was music. After playing with local musicians and being exposed for the first time to records of the major jazz musicians and composers he abandoned his medical studies. He set out to make a career in music, desirous of playing like Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy.
In 1964 he went to Chicago for a few weeks where he encountered Muhal Richard Abrams' philosophy of making music, then headed for New York, where he was soon introduced to avant-garde saxist Guiseppi Logan, and absorbed more of the philosophy of creative music. Logan invited Don to play piano on his two record dates, 'Guiseppi Logan'(October 1964) and 'More Guiseppi Logan' (May 1965) on ESP, both exercises in structured free playing. Although these were Guiseppi Logan's recordings, most critical attention was given to the playing of percussionist Milford Graves and the unknown Don Pullen with his astonishing mastery of his instrument.
Subsequently he and Milford Graves formed a duo and their piano and drums concert at Yale University in May 1966 was recorded. They formed their own independent SRP record label to publish the result as two LPs. These were the first records to bear Don Pullen's name, second to Milford's. Although not greatly known in the United States, these avant-garde albums were well received in Europe and most copies were sold there. These have never been reissued after the first run sold out.
Finding little money in playing avant-garde jazz, Don began to play the Hammond organ to extend his opportunities for work, transferring elements of his individual piano style to this instrument. During the remainder of the 1960s and early the 1970s, he played with his own organ trio in clubs and bars, worked as self- taught arranger for record companies, and accompanied various singers, including Arthur Prysock and Nina Simone.
He suffered at this time, and for a long time after, from two undeserved allegations; the first (despite his grounding in the church and blues) that he was purely a free player and thus unemployable in any other context, the second that he had been heavily influenced by Cecil Taylor or was a clone of Cecil Taylor, to whose playing Don's own bore a superficial resemblance. Don strenuously denied that he had any link with Cecil Taylor, stating that his own style had been developed in isolation before he ever heard of Cecil. But the assertion of Cecil's influence continued to the end of Don's life, and persists even to this day.
He appeared on no more commercial recordings until 1971 and 1972 when he played organ on three recordings by blues altoist Williams, one being issued under the title of a Pullen composition, “Trees And Grass And Things”. In 1973 drummer Roy Brooks introduced Don to bassist Charles Mingus, and after a brief audition he took over the vacant piano chair in the Mingus group; when a tenor saxophone player was needed, Don recommended George Adams; subsequently Dannie Richmond returned on drums; and these men, together with Jack Walrath on trumpet, formed the last great Mingus group.
Being part of the Mingus group and appearing at many concerts and on three Mingus studio recordings, 'Mingus Moves' (1973), 'Changes One' and 'Changes Two' (both 1974), gave great exposure to Don's playing and helped to persuade audiences and critics that Pullen was not just a free player. Two of his own compositions 'Newcomer' and 'Big Alice' were recorded on the 'Mingus Moves' session but 'Big Alice' was not released until a CD re- issue many years later. However musical disagreements with Mingus caused Don to leave the group in 1975. Don had always played piano with bass and drums behind him, feeling more comfortable this way, but in early 1975 he was persuaded to play a solo concert in Toronto. This was recorded and as 'Solo Piano Album' became the first record issued under Don's name alone. Among other pieces, it contains 'Sweet (Suite) Malcolm' declared a masterpiece by Cameron Brown, Don's long time associate of later years.
There was now growing awareness of Don's abilities but it was the European recording companies that were prepared to preserve it. In 1975 an Italian record company gave Don, George Adams and Dannie Richmond the opportunity to each make a recording under his own name. All three collaborated in the others' recordings. In the same year, Don made two further solo recordings in Italy for different record labels; 'Five To Go' and 'Healing Force', the latter being received with great acclaim. He became part of the regular seasonal tours of American musicians to Europe, playing in the avant-garde or free mode. In 1977, Don was signed by a major American jazz record company, Atlantic. This led to two records, the untypical 'Tomorrow's Promises' and the live 'Montreux Concert'. But after these, Don's association with Atlantic was terminated and he returned to European companies for three recordings under his own name or in partnership; 'Warriors', and 'Milano Strut' in '78 and 'The Magic Triangle' in '79. These, especially the startling 'Warriors' with its strong 30 minute title track, have remained in the catalogues over the years.
Meanwhile he recorded with groups led by Billy Hart (drums), Hamiet Bluiett, (baritone sax.), Cecil McBee (bass), Sunny Murray (drums) and Marcello Melis (bass). On the formation of the first Mingus Dynasty band Don occupied the piano chair and appeared on their recording 'Chair In The Sky' in 1979, but he soon left the band, feeling the music had diverged too far from Mingus' intentions. In late 1979 Don, George Adams and Dannie Richmond were booked to play as a quartet for a European tour of a few weeks duration. Don invited Cameron Brown to join them on bass. They were asked to bill themselves as a Mingus group but not wanting to be identified as mere copyists they declined and performed as the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet. They played more structured music than Don normally favoured, but the immediate rapport among them led to the group touring the world with unchanged personnel until the death of Dannie Richmond in early 1988. From very early in their first tour in 1979, and until 1985, the quartet made a dozen remarkable recordings for European labels, both studio and live. Of these, 'Earth Beams' (1980), 'Live At The Village Vanguard' (1983) and 'Decisions' (1984) provide typically fine examples of their work at that period. Although highly regarded in Europe, the quartet felt they were not well enough known in America so in 1986 they signed to record for the American Blue Note label for which they recorded 'Breakthrough' (1986) and 'Song Everlasting' (1987). Beginning the Blue Note contract with great hope of increased fame and success, (as shown by the title of their first Blue Note album) they became disillusioned by the poor availability of these two records. Although the power of their live concerts maintained their reputation as one of the most exciting groups ever seen, the music recorded for the Blue Note sessions was at first deemed 'smoother' than on their European recordings, and took time to achieve the same high reputation.
After the death of Dannie Richmond the quartet fulfilled their remaining contracted engagements with a different drummer and then disbanded in mid 1988. Their music, usually original compositions by Don, George and Dannie, had ranged from blues, through ballads, to post- bop and avant-garde. The ability of the players to encompass all these areas, often within one composition, removed any sameness or sterility from the quartet format. Except for the early recordings on the vanished Horo label, their European recordings remained regularly available, unlike those made for Blue Note.
During the life of the Quartet, Don also made a duo recording with George Adams 'Melodic Excursions' (1982) and made three recordings under his own name, two further solo albums, the acclaimed 'Evidence Of Things Unseen' (1983) and 'Plays Monk' (1984), then with a quintet, another highly praised recording 'The Sixth Sense' (1985). He also recorded with (alphabetically) Hamiet Bluiett; Roy Brooks, the drummer who introduced him to Mingus; Jane Bunnett; Kip Hanrahan; Beaver Harris; Marcello Melis; and David Murray.
All Don's future recordings under his own name would now be for Blue Note. On 16th December 1988 he went into the studio with Gary Peacock (bass) and Tony Williams (drums) to make his first trio album 'New Beginnings', which astonished even those familiar with his work and became widely regarded as one of the finest trio albums ever recorded. He followed this in 1990 with another trio album 'Random Thoughts', in somewhat lighter mood, this time with James Genus (bass) and Lewis Nash (drums).
In late 1990 Don added a new element to his playing and his music with the formation of his African Brazilian Connection ('ABC'). This featured, as well as Don, Carlos Ward (alto sax), Nilson Matta (bass), Guilherme Franco and Mor Thiam (percussion) in a group which mixed African and Latin rhythms with Jazz. Their exciting first album “Kele Mou Bana” was released in 1991. Their second, but very different, album of 1993, 'Ode To Life' was a tribute to George Adams, who had died on 14th November 1992, containing Don's heartfelt and moving composition in George's memory 'Ah George We Hardly Knew Ya'. A third album 'Live .... Again' recorded in July 1993 at the Montreux festival, but not released until 1995. This featured 'Ah George...' and other songs from their previous albums, in somewhat extended versions. Don achieved more popular and commercial success with this group than with any other. In 1993 'Ode To Life' was fifth on the U.S. Billboard top jazz album chart.
During the last few years of his too short life, Don toured with his trio, with his African Brazilian Connection, as a solo artist, and with groups led by others, making much fine music, but sadly not enough records. The greatest loss to his admirers was that although his solo playing seemed to grow in power, he was never invited to record another solo album. Meanwhile he made important contributions to concerts and recordings of groups led by others, such as (alphabetically) Jane Bunnett (notably their fine Duo album 'New York Duets); Bill Cosby(!); Kip Hanrahan; David Murray (on organ, the best recorded example of his organ style being on Murray's 1991 'Shakill's Warrior'); Maceo Parker (on organ); Ivo Perelman; Jack Walrath (again on organ). He also toured and recorded with the group 'Roots' from its inception.
Don's final project was a work combining the music of his African Brazilian Connection (extended by Joseph Bowie on trombone) with a choir and drums of Native Americans. In 1994 Don was diagnosed with the lymphoma which eventually ended his life but, despite this, he put great physical effort into completing the this important and deeply felt composition. In early March 1995 he played on the recording 'Sacred Common Ground', displaying all his usual power although being but a few weeks away from his untimely death, returning as always to his heritage of the blues and the church. Unable himself to play at the live premiere, his place at the piano was taken by D D Jackson, with whom Don discussed the music from his hospital bed shortly before his death. He died on 22nd April 1995.
Don composed many pieces with melodies and rhythms which linger in the mind, often they were portraits or memories of people he knew. All were published by his own company Andredon but because he himself for a long time suffered from neglect musically so did many of his compositions. His most well known are the humorous 'Big Alice' (for an imaginary fan), the incredible 'Double Arc Jake' (for his son and Rahsaan Roland Kirk), the passionate 'Ode To Life' (for a friend), and the aforementioned lament 'Ah George We Hardly Knew Ya'. Occasionally he wrote pieces with a religious feeling, such as 'Gratitude' and 'Healing Force', or to highlight the plight of Afro-Americans such as 'Warriors', 'Silence = Death, and 'Endangered Species: African American Youth'. Following the assassination of Afro-American activist Malcolm X, Don had written a suite dedicated to Malcolm's memory but this required more instrumental resources than a normal jazz group provides, and only the piano parts of this were ever recorded. Except for the 'Plays Monk' album, Don almost exclusively featured his own compositions on his own recordings, until his time with the African Brazilian Connection. His compositions are well represented on the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet recordings, but such compositions by Don which were recorded by others, were usually performed by those who had known and worked with him.
Although Don was able to play the piano in almost any style, (the attribute that had made him so important to the wide-ranging music of Mingus) and sometimes gave the impression that there were two pianists at the keyboard, he caused most astonishment by his ability to place extremely precise singing runs or glissandi over heavy chords, reminiscent of traditional blues, while never losing contact with the melodic line. His technique for creating these runs, where he seemed to roll his right hand over and over along the keys, received much comment from critics, was studied by pianists, and heavily filmed and investigated, but could never be totally explained, even by Don who had developed it. His piano technique can be seen on the DVDs 'Mingus At Montreux 1975' and on 'Roots Salutes The Saxophones'. But it is better not to concentrate too much on his technique, especially now that he is gone from among us, and to pay attention to his depth of feeling and the intensity of improvisations, whether these were suggested by the song itself or engendered by the moment. It is easy to forget that those who come to love his music from his records may be totally unaware of his playing method. Even at his concerts, only a minority of the audience would be fully able to see his hands moving along the keyboard and be aware of exactly how he revealed the emotional outpourings of his soul.
Don Pullen, like many other of greatest jazz musicians, had given his life to the music and was greatly missed after his death. Several musicians wrote songs as personal tributes to his memory, including Jane Bunnett, Cameron Brown, D D Jackson, and David Murray.
David Murray and D D Jackson made a whole album 'The Long Goodbye' dedicated to Don.
In 2005 Mosaic issued a set of four long unavailable Blue Note recordings, 'Breakthrough' and 'Song Everlasting' by the 'The Don Pullen/George Adams Quartet, and 'New Beginning' and 'Random Thoughts' by Don's own trio.
Source: Mike Bond
http://www.donpullen.de/collect/coda.htm
Don Pullen: An Interview by Vernon Frazer HOME
The following interview was published first in the jazz magazine "coda", October 1976, Toronto, Canada. Photographs by Bill Smith.
Vernon Frazer: In 1966 I heard you play on a Giuseppi Logan album and read several reviews of your performances and recordings with Milford Graves. After that, I didn't see your name mentioned until about 1972, when you joined Charles Mingus' band. What did you do during those years? Apparently you received very little publicity.
Don Pullen: During that time the music critics were especially adverse to what they called the New Music, Avant Garde or whatever. After the period with Milford Graves, I worked with a trio around New York, had an organ group and played for a lot of singers. I just made it any way I could and still stay in music.
V.F.: How did you join Mingus?
D.P.: Roy Brooks recommended me. Mingus just called me and I made the gig.
V.F.: And you stayed with him for three years?
D.P.: Approximately.
V.F.: Why did you decide to leave Mingus?
D.P.: Personal reasons. It was just time to go, time to leave.
V.F.: Do you want to be more specific ?
D.P.: I would rather not, right now.
V.F.: During the time you played with him, did Mingus influence you in any way?
D.P.: No. Before I met Mingus, I was playing virtually the same way I play now. My way of playing had to be a little more contained with him because of the form of the tunes, the changes and so forth. I had to stay within a certain framework to do justice to his tunes, you see. lf I had ventured to play them the way I think they should be played, there might have been a little conflict.
V.F.: What have you been doing since you left his band?
D.P.: I've been doing a few things. I've recorded for an Italian label, a European label, done solo concerts up in Canada. I've worked with a trio here in New York, using Bobby Battle on drums and Alex Blake, whenever he's available, on bass.
V.F.: In the mid-sixties you and Milford Graves recorded, produced and distributed an album by yourselves. Why did you choose this over the more conventional avenues of recording?
D.P.: For awhile, the critics and record producers were turning thumbs down on the New Music and the New Musicians. Milford and I were having difficulty getting recorded, as I am even today. We weren't getting any play from the White Establishment. They were only recording those they felt were more Establishment-inclined, so we just decided to do it ourselves. During that time, you see, the lack Revolution was happening. The social and political aspects made it just about the right time for us to go into this venture. Musicians were thinking about controlling their own music. We weren't going to sit back and wait on the Man to say, "Well, here. Take this crumb." We said, "We'll do it ourselves." That was the impetus. We did a concert at Yale, decided to record it and try to do it ourselves, to expose ourselves. And we were successful to a very big degree, you know. We sold a lot of records, we got our name out there. We achieved what we set out to do.
V.F.: Were any other opportunities for recording available at that time, possibly through ESP Records or through Bill Dixon, when he was at Savoy?
D.P.: I came to New York, I think, a little bit after Bill Dixon and the Savoy thing. I did record two albums for ESP with Giuseppi Logan but I never did an album for him under my own name. Bernard Stollman, by that time, had - has even now- a lot of good music. He recorded everybody, all the cats. Some of it he released, some of it he didn't.
V.F.: When you put out your own record, did you hope to attract the attention of a major Jazz label?
D.P.: Not really. We were mainly concerned with trying to build our own company and eventually control our own music. When I traveled with Mingus and even now, wherever I go, people always ask about the record. Milford and I get letters now, every day, from people asking where they can get the record. We only did two. I think eventually we're going to have to reissue both albums. One avenue might be to lease the masters to a larger company. There's a lot of headaches, a lot of trouble, in trying to take care of the business and play also. lt would be easier for another company to put it on the market.
V.F.: How did you handle the distribution of the record?
D.P.: We went into mail order. We got some play from the music magazines Downbeat, Jazz, all the major Jazz magazines. Different music critics would write about, you know, and people would write in and ask for it. Some distributors in Europe and Japan asked for five hundred or a thousand copies. But in the U.S. we never had any distribution to speak of. We sold more records in Europe and Japan than we did in the States.
V.F.: lt seems you've recorded more outside the States than you have inside.
D.P.: Yeah. I've got three in Europe and one in Canada in 1975, you know, and can't get a record date in America.
V.F.: Why can't you get a record date here?
D.P.: I have no idea. I don't think they like me here. I think they're trying to run me out of the country. (Laughs) I don't know, man. I really don't know. I have certain opinions I might venture, but I really can't say.
V.F.: Would you put out your own record now, if you felt it was necessary?
D.P.: If I felt it was necessary, I would do it. Like I said, I really don't want the headache of doing it. I enjoy the work that's involved, but I would prefer to let somebody else do it while I concentrate on the music. The machinery that's necessary, the distribution, is a major problem with any venture such as producing. You have to have world-wide distribution. It means collecting your money - all this takes a big operation to be really big, you know? If necessary, I do it on a small level - you know, myself. And I'm almost to that point now. I've done it before, so I can do it again.
V.F.: Although independent recording has received less publicity than it did during the sixties, it seems that, in recent years, the number of musicians who release their own work on their own labels has increased. Do you think these musicians are acting on the same motivation as you and Graves?
D.P.: Yeah. The same things. In fact, a lot of the cats that are trying to produce their own records today come to us from time to time for advice, to see how we did it. They're doing it their own way, but I think Milford and I, during the sixties, were pioneers in that aspect of doing it yourself. Of course, other musicians have done it before: Sun Ra, Mingus. But during that time, we were the youngest cats out there and it was like phenomenal for two young dudes to be doing it, you see. So it inspired other cats to say, "Yeah, we'll try it too."
V.F.: Over the past decade, what changes do you think have taken place in the New Music?
D.P.: Looking back and comparing then with now, I don't see that real drive. Like, cats were I hate to just say "into it", but that's the best I can explain - they were into it. It was like a community, you know, even though they might be separated for miles. Nowadays, I think they're going more towards the Jazz-Rock - that bullshit, you know - trying to sound like Miles. There's no real influence, no leadership, out there. Which is one reason why I think they won't record me. If they ever give me a chance, I'm gonna lay something heavy on 'em and they really don't want anything like that - too heavy - out. The people in power always say, "Well, people don't want to hear this" or "People don't understand it." They're always looking down on people. I think one of the prime purposes of music is enlightenment, to elevate people. Music is supposed to elevate the person. If you always play down to people, they don't move anywhere. For instance, different things I was doing in the sixties I hear cats in Rock doing now. But in the sixties, they said it was nonsense.
V.F.: They didn't understand it at the time.
D.P.: Exactly. And they said, "People can't understand it, they'll never understand it. " But they're doing it. I'm playing basically the same way I've been playing all my life and more and more people are digging it. But what if I had stopped back then? If nobody ever does anything new, if nobody tries to advance the music, then everything is going to become dead. Everything is going to become stagnant. Everybody was talking about "Jazz is Dead " because there was no innovation, there were no new things out. But there were. It was happening, but it wasn't being given to the people. It wasn't being exposed at all. So they said, "Well, it's dead." Damn right it's dead, if you keep playing something over and over for twenty years.
V.F.: The media made it appear dead, although a lot was really going on.
D.P.: Yeah. That's what was happening when the so-called Revolution in Music was happening. They called it the "October Revolution". They used the term "revolution" because there was a call for something new. When I first came to New York in 1964, Bill Dixon had a club - on 96th Street, I think. He was doing that thing and I was there every night. I heard them cats and I said, "Goddamn! What is this shit? What is this here?" That was what I had been looking for, searching for. People used to say I played strange. I really didn't know anybody else who was playing, you know? So when I went there I had heard Eric Dolphy and Ornette - they were the two main influences on me - but aside from them, I didn't know there were many other musicians playing. I said, "Well, this is it. I'm not alone"
V.F.: During that period, the New Musicians were attempting to develop an aesthetic which didn't necessarily require or follow a preconceived structure -
D.P.: That's not true. The critics used to say that because they didn't know what the structure was, what the form was. The form was different, something they never heard, so they said there was no form. They didn't know what it was. On a higher level there is a communication among musicians that gives its own form to what you're doing, you see. This is why I don't like to play with a lot of people. If I do, I like for everybody's head to be in the same direction. That way you can create on that higher level. Like I said, the form, the structure, everything was there. People weren't used to hearing it and so they said there was none. Now, one critic wrote about me and said I didn't have one touch of rhythm at all. He said I didn't have no melody, no rhythm, no nothing. It was dumbass! (Laughs.) He didn't know.
V.F.: Would it be more accurate to say that the New Musicians used a wide variety of structures, sometimes within the same piece, to enhance their expression?
D.P.: Yeah. They used to call it freedom because you were free to do whatever you wanted to do. But that wasn't really now in the sense that, for instance, Mingus' compositions, though from a different era, have always been free. Duke's were like that. Duke used whatever he felt that he should use to express whatever ideas he had, so that was really nothing new. It was just a different way of expressing the same thing. You see, there are no limits to music, to anything. The only limitation is your own mind. If you say, "Well, this is what I want to do," then stop there, that's as far as it's gonna go. But somebody else is gonna say, "No, I can take it a little bit farther than that." Everything builds, one on top of the other, you know. It's like a stack, one up. You just stop whenever you go as high as you want to go. That's the end of it. There's one area of music that if you do get into is very dangerous for your life, but I don't want to get into that. I really don't know much about it.
D.P.: It's difficult for me to discuss my own music because I've never really satisfied myself. I know that I have done some good things. I think the solo album I did for Sackville is good. I like that more than anything else I've done. But now I don't even like that. I can't say because I'm continually growing. What I played five minutes ago, I won't like the next five.
V.F.: Do you prefer to play solo or with a group?
D.P.: At this point, I enjoy both. When I come out with a group, I do parts of a performance solo and parts of it with the group. I play differently with a group than I do solo. Solo gives me a different kind of freedom of expression than with a group. For example, Song Played Backwards. I started at the end and played it backwards.
V.F.: What was the song?
D.P.: I didn't have a title for it. I played it by myself, you know, so I just...played it backwards. (Laughs.) There are different ways of doing things. I just felt like doing it, so I did it. When I solo, it's only my mind. You can do anything you want to do with a group, you know. Like I said, you set your own limitations. When I play with a group, I have another kind of freedom of expression because I have the other minds, the other vibrations of the musicians working, you see. There's interplay. You have to consider them and they have to consider you. So a group adds another aspect to the music. I enjoy both, you know, and it doesn't matter to me if I play solo or with somebody else.
V.F.: Have you performed any of your solo pieces in a group setting?
D.P.: No, I haven't. Some of them are not adaptable to groups. At least, I haven't figured out a way to do it. I imagine I can. Some I just like to play solo. Richard's Tune is one of my favorites. It's adaptable to group or trio or whatever, but I prefer to play it solo. The Malcolm piece is part of a suite which has seven or eight different...tunes, I guess you'd call them. The only one that I can play solo is the one I recorded, Malcolm, Memories and Gunshots. That's the only one that's adaptable to piano. The rest of it is integrated into the full wide spectrum - small group, strings, full orchestra.
V.F.: Then you've written for large ensembles, also?
D.P.: Yeah, I used to be Arranger and Conductor for King Records a few years back. That was also in the sixties. Not jazz things, but for singers: Arthur Prysock, Irene Reid.
V.F.: In recent years, jazz musicians have recorded solo piano albums more frequently than they have in the past. Why do you think this is happening?
D.P.: I really don't know, but it's nothing new. Tatum did it. Monk has done it. Duke. On one cut I remember, Eric Dolphy played solo saxophone - God Bless The Child, I believe. Solo isn't really new, you know. My cousin, who was a big influence on my playing - Clyde "Fats" Wright used to tell me that unless you could play solo, you couldn't play at all. I think every piano player has to. If you sit home and practise, you develop a way of playing solo, anyway. I think more people are becoming aware of the beauty of just piano alone. Classical music, you know, has solo concerts, so it's not strange for jazz to do the same thing. It's always been there.
V.F.: Do you think the increase in solo piano recordings could be, in part, a reaction to the increased use of electronic keyboard instruments?
D.P.: I don't know. I don't deal with electronics too much. I don't know anything about them, really. I've played electric piano, but I think all those things will pass, you know. It's not real, it's not the real thing. I break up electric pianos, so I can't play them. I have to be very careful with them or else they won't last ten minutes. My own piano is in such bad shape, man, that I've been trying to tune it myself. I'm ashamed to call a tuner over here to try to fix it. So I need something sturdy.
V.F.: An electric piano wouldn't lend itself to your percussive style of playing.
D.P.: It doesn't lend itself at all. It doesn't have the sound, the overtones - I make use of overtones. The electric piano. Well, there can't be. There might be electronic ones. But I don't think I want to get into that.
V.F.: In your solo pieces, you sometimes play the strings inside the piano. Did you learn this formally or pick it up on your own?
D.P.: I did it on my own. My technique is my own. I don't know if anybody can teach you to play strings. You have to do it yourself, find out where they are and play them.
V.F.: When you improvise, do you consciously move "inside" or "outside", as the terms are customarily used?
D.P.: No, I wouldn't say so. It depends on the particular composition that I'm playing. If I'm playing a tune with a set structure, say the structure is "in" and I want to move "out", then I don't consciously say that I want to move "out". I try to let the flow of the music direct me. If you feel it's going in a particular direction, don't force it. Other times it might be necessary to force it in some direction, whatever it is. If you don't feel like you're getting what you want out of the music, then you have to force it. We have to get out of the concept of "in " and "out ". I might say, "This cat is out, " but I don't mean it in the sense of "as a way of playing". There's no such thing as playing "in " or "out ". It's a way of playing. Period. It's just what you feel, how you're playing. You have to let it move you, instead of moving yourself. There's no feeling of what to do next, or whatever. You don't really know what you're going to do next.
V.F.: A number of your compositions appear simple in their melodic content, in that a listener can easily sing the melodies. How does this relate to the complexity of your improvisation? Some musicians use relatively simple compositions because the simplicity allows them more freedom to improvise.
D.P.: Well, the majority of my compositions are about people that I know. Dee Arr is Danny Richmond. Richard is Richard Abrams. And Traceys of Daniel that's my daughter, Tracey Danielle. Melodies are moods, rhythms and feelings that remind me of certain people. I find that within people there's just one thing and that's very simple. Their ways of acting, the things they do, the way they go through certain changes, gets complex. But, basically everything is the same. We come from one source, you know. So that's the way my little melodies come out. And I find that I'm not that complex anyway, so far as music is concerned. Simplicity is very difficult to achieve - to play simple, I mean. Mal Waldron is a good friend of mine. I remember I was at school when I first heard him. It was amazing to me how he could take about four or five notes and play nothing but those four or five, or just play within a scale, and just weave those notes in and out, in and out and still keep building. He's a master of simplicity and there's so much beauty in simplicity. But I can think of a person and play something that would remind me of him. I do things like that.
V.F.: In the sixties, your playing was frequently compared to Cecil Taylor's -
D.P.: That's only dumb critic's talk! When I came to New York, I didn't even know who Cecil Taylor was. In fact, I met Cecil three times over the last ten years and I have never yet heard him play.
V.F.: Not even on records?
D.P.: I've heard one or two records by him. One of them, I think, was at Bill Smith's house in Canada. The last time I saw Cecil was in Switzerland, at Montreux. We talked just about all day, hung out all day together. I got to know him a little better then, but this was about ten years later, you see. He's aware that I don't play like him and I'm aware that he doesn't play like me, either. We appreciate each other, we dig each other as people. I used to purposely avoid him because when I came to New York the first review was, "Don Pullen sounds like Cecil Taylor." If the critics said anything about me, Cecil's name had to be mentioned. Now, I didn't know who this motherfucker was, never even seen him. If he was playing somewhere, I wouldn't go there because I didn't want to sound like anybody. I was insecure in my position because he's been established for twenty or thirty years and I supposedly sounded like him. So I said, 'Whoever he is, I'm gonna stay away from him so that I can be free to develop my own way and go my own way." If I sounded that much like him, as young as I was, then I might have been influenced by him.
V.F.: Which would have been dangerous for your future growth.
D.P.: Yes, of course. So l stayed away from him. As I became secure in my position, that I could play my own way, it didn't matter. So now I consider him a friend and I still don't know what he sounds like. From what I've heard of him, we might have the same way of doing things. But if you play C-D-E-F-G and I play the same thing, it's going to sound different. People haven't tuned their ears to hear the difference between your C and my C. Or maybe they're not taking the time to hear the difference. Cecil's background and my background are so different that we could never possibly sound alike.
V.F.: What is your background? l know Cecil graduated from the New England Conservatory. Their catalogue lists him as one of their Distinguished Alumni although, from what I've read about him, he hated the place.
D.P.: (Laughs.) I imagine he would. He's a free spirit and a very beautiful person. So I imagine that they probably did give him hell. But my background was the Rhythm and Blues, chitterlings circuit and the church.
V.F.: Did you have any conservatory training?
D.P.: No.
V.F.: Any lessons?
D.P.: Oh yeah. The lady across the street was a piano teacher. But that was it. I went to school to become a doctor, but split after awhile. The pull of music, the influence of music, was too great. School was just a diversionary tactic. I knew all along I was going into music. So here I am: got my shingle hanging out and an eviction notice on my door.
D.P.: Fusion music?
V.F.: Yeah. The Jazz-Rock that Miles is doing, for example.
D.P.: Oh, that's what they call it?
V.F.: That's the most common label for it.
D.P.: Oh yeah?... Fusion music.
V.F.: The fusion of Jazz and Rock.
D.P.: Oh, I see. Okay...Con-fusion.
V.F.: (Laughs.) Anyway, some of the musicians playing Fusion music have openly stated that they're playing to make money so they can survive, as well as invest in the equipment and facilities required to make their music. Do you think you could alter your style to achieve greater commercial success?
D.P.: I could do it easily. It's hard, man, when you see cats out there making a whole bunch of money playin' shit while you're trying to elevate the music and by elevating the music elevate yourself. It's a feather in your cap when you are being true to the music. So it's sort of difficult. I imagine anybody might be tempted to do something. But with me it's only lasted for a minute because I wouldn't be able to live unless I got some sort of satisfaction from the music that I was playing. I would probably die right quick, so there's only one way for me to go. I have to be true to myself and play the music that I feel I'm supposed to play. Otherwise, there's no purpose to it. What have I been doing all these years if I'm gonna sit down and play some shit, some garbage, you know? Then I've wasted half my life because I don't need training, I don't need thought, I don't need mental abilities, I don't need insight, I don't need creative power - I don't need any of that, you dig? I could just sit down and bullshit! If the cats that are doing it feel that's where they belong, then I've got no criticism of them. But a lot of it's more business and greed than anything else.
V.F.: It's difficult for you to get your music heard. What do you do to survive?
D.P.: What do I do? I do the same thing I'm doing now, just make it from day to day and keep my music on a high level. If I take care of the music, it'll take care of me. Then I go out, try to help myself. I don't just lay on my ass. I do whatever is necessary. If I believe in the music like I say I do, then I've got to do something to make the music heard. There's different ways of doing it. But I've managed these years. I might take a gig at the corner bar, playing some funk or fatback, whatever you want to call it, to survive, all for the music. There are bad periods in everyone's life, you know, periods when nothing is happening or happening the way you would like it to. But if you endure those periods, your playing becomes that much stronger. You learn from those periods, gain strength from them and the strength you gain comes out in your music. If you play truthful music, it's going to prevail, no matter what. My music is too good to be ignored, so I'll do whatever I have to do to keep it on a high level and get it out to the people. Like I said, if I take care of the music, the music will take care of me.
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/24/obituaries/don-pullen-pianist-53-dies-distinctive-improviser-in-jazz.html
Don
Pullen, one of the major jazz pianists of his generation, died on
Saturday at his brother's home in East Orange, N.J. He was 53 and lived
in Passaic, N.J.
The cause was lymphoma, said Don Lucoff, a publicity representative for Blue Note Records.
Mr. Pullen was one of the most percussive pianists in jazz. His improvisations brimmed with splashed clusters, hammered notes and large two-handed chords. His solos often started out traditionally, with single note lines articulating a composition's harmony, then grew richer with bright explosions of tones. Mr. Pullen used the backs of his hands, or occasionally an elbow; he managed to take techniques from the modern European classical repertory and use them in his music without ever losing a jazz sensibility. Mr. Pullen's importance lies in part in his ability to synthesize so many different forms of expression.
Although Mr. Pullen began as a church pianist and became interested in the work of Art Tatum, he was quickly accepted into the ranks of the avant-garde of the 1960's. In 1965 in New York, he worked with Giuseppe Logan and played for a series of rhythm-and-blues singers including Big Maybelle, Ruth Brown and Arthur Prysock, often using the organ instead of the piano. But his main allegiance was to the free jazz of the era, and he regularly performed with the drummer Milford Graves in the mid-1960's.
In 1973 he began a two-year association with Charles Mingus, who helped introduce Mr. Pullen's style to a wider audience. He was heard on two important albums, "Changes 1" and "Changes 2." Mr. Mingus prized what Mr. Pullen had to offer: a church-driven power, a blues sensibility and a harmonic sophistication.
In the late 1970's and early 80's, he and the drummer Beaver Harris led a rocking group, 360 Degree Music Experience, which included steel drums and the powerful saxophonist Ricky Ford. And in 1979, with the saxophonist and Mingus alumnus George Adams, he started a group that recorded 10 albums over the next decade. Mr. Pullen had begun his own career as a soloist in 1975, recording for the Canadian Sackville label. In the 1970's he recorded for Atlantic Records, among others, and in 1985 he released an exceptional album, "The Sixth Sense," for the Italian label Black Saint. He also regularly worked in clubs.
He continued with a series of stunning albums for Blue Note Records. Some were trio recordings that allowed Mr. Pullen to draw on all his experiences as a musician; the church, rhythm-and-blues, pop and jazz all came out in them, as did his extraordinarily inventive and distinct improvisational style. And he recorded three albums of Brazilian-influenced jazz. Mr. Pullen was still recording and performing several weeks ago, and in early March he finished his last recording, due out next year.
He is survived by his companion, Jana Haimsohn; three sons, Andre, Don and Keith; a daughter, Tracey; his father, Aubrey; a sister, Doris; three brothers, Keith, Aubrey and James, and a granddaughter.
A version of this obituary; biography appears in print on April 24, 1995, on Page B00012 of the National edition with the headline: Don Pullen, Pianist, 53, Dies; Distinctive Improviser in Jazz.
Frans Schellekens/Redferns/Getty Images
Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz
Don Pullen On Piano Jazz
AUDIO: <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/570834686/570846392" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>
Pianist Don Pullen (1941–1995) was known for his melodic brilliance, swirling chords and glissandos; his kinetic, cascading piano attack could ignite any band. He gained his first experiences playing African-American church music and R&B, and his career took off when he joined Charles Mingus' band in the 1970s. He went on to form his own quartet with saxophonist George Adams.
In this 1989 episode of Piano Jazz, Pullen performs one of his original compositions, "Jana's Delight." He and host Marian McPartland get together for "All The Things You Are."
Originally broadcast in the fall of 1989.
SET LIST:
- "Once Upon A Time" (Pullen)
- "The Sixth Sense" (Dean, Pullen)
- "All The Things You Are" (Hammerstein, Kern)
- "Mad About The Boy" (Coward)
- "On Green Dolphin Street" (Kaper, Washington)
- "Jana's Delight" (Pullen)
- "Clothed Woman" (Ellington)
- "Don And Marian's Blues" (McPartland, Pullen)
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-05-01-ca-60931-story.html
APPRECIATION: Don Pullen, Jazz Visionary, Creative to the Very End
by DON HECKMAN
May 1, 1995
Los Angeles Times
It was typical of Don Pullen that when he died on April 22 of lymphoma, he was eagerly looking ahead to other projects. The 53-year-old pianist, one of the finest--and, sadly, one of the most under-recognized--jazz men to emerge in the '60s from the caldron of New York's avant-garde, spent the last two years determinedly making music while battling the cancer that eventually took his life.
Neither the physical nor the psychological impact of the illness could deter him from an extraordinarily productive schedule of creative activities. A week before he passed away in East Orange, N.J., Pullen was still thinking about doing a trio album playing organ, an instrument that had fascinated him since he used it in soul-jazz gigs in Harlem in the late '60s.
"I told him," said Blue Note Records President Bruce Lundvall, who signed Pullen to a contract with the label, "to just let me know when he wanted to go into the studio and we'd have it ready for him."
As it turned out, that final session eluded Pullen. But there is little doubt that, had it taken place, the music would have been filled with the life-affirming sounds that were intrinsic to his art. His earliest work, with players such as Milford Graves, Giuseppi Logan and Albert Ayler, bristled with stormy, percussive chording and tradition-busting free improvisations. Like Cecil Taylor and 20th-Century composers Henry Cowell and John Cage, he approached the piano from an unconventional point of view, pounding on keys with forearms, plucking strings, using every possible sound-producing part of the instrument. Yet it was obvious, even at the time, that Pullen was no finger-throwing, unskilled radical. His most expressionistic playing, however explosive, was always informed by imagination, technique and musical intelligence.
Pullen's broader versatility became evident in the early '70s, when he performed with Charles Mingus' last great small band (with George Adams and Dannie Richmond), then moved on to memorable associations with Beaver Harris' 360 Degree Experience, the Mingus Dynasty Band and a 10-year connection with Richmond, Adams and bassist Cameron Brown in the Pullen-Adams quartet.
The closing phase of Pullen's career may have been the most remarkable of all. In 1990, he fulfilled a long-cherished dream and expanded his musical vision even more by forming the African Brazilian Connection--a group that included Senegalese percussionist Mor Thian, Brazilian drummer Guilherme Franco and bassist Nilson Matta, and Panamanian-born saxophonist Carlos Ward. The ensemble's work, preserved in three recordings ("Kele Mou Bana," "Ode to Life" and "Live . . . Again") has been a brilliant confirmation of Pullen's belief in the capacity of jazz to reach out and encompass music from all parts of the world.
Pullen completed his
final recording, "Sacred Common Ground," last month. Scheduled for
release in 1996, the work is a collaboration linking the African
Brazilian Connection, the Garth Fagan Dance company and the Chief Cliff
Singers, a group of seven drummer-singers from the Confederated Salish
and Kootenai Native American reservations in Elmo, Mont. A year and a
half in the making, it is a pioneering exploration of unexpected bonds
between jazz and Native American music.
Pullen is survived by his companion, Jana Haimsohn, and four children. Contributions in his memory can be made to the Don Pullen Children's Educational Fund, 530 Canal St., N.Y. 10013. Proceeds will be used toward his children's educations.
Don Pullen: Jazz Pianist Known for Improvisational Work
April 28, 1995
Los Angeles Times
Don Pullen, 53, key jazz pianist known for
his improvisations. Recognized as a particularly percussive pianist,
Pullen often used the back of his hands or even an elbow to obtain
large, hammering chords. A native of Roanoke, Va., Pullen studied at
Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C., and worked privately
with Muhal Richard Abrams. Pullen was also influenced by his cousin,
pianist Clyde (Fats) Wright. Mastering the organ as well as the piano,
Pullen began his career playing for church choirs. But he quickly segued
into jazz in the 1960s, combining his church-practiced power with a
blues touch. He worked in New York with Giuseppe Logan. He earned
perhaps his widest fame playing for Charles Mingus from 1973 to 1975,
recording the major albums "Changes 1" and "Changes 2." Pullen
frequently worked with his own group and appeared with them on
television in "Jazz Adventures" and "Black Journal." In 1979, he and
drummer Beaver Harris led a group called 360 Degree Music Experience
featuring fellow Mingus alumnus George Adams. Pullen recorded numerous
albums, primarily for Blue Note Records. Pullen was a frequent guest
artist at music festivals, and found particular popularity in
Scandinavian programs. On Saturday in East Orange, N.J., of lymphoma.
http://www.donpullen.de/collect/bluenote.htm
https://www.jeffcenter.org/donpullen
Online tickets for this show are now closed. For seating availability please call the box office directly 540-345-2550, x1 after 6 pm.
Thank you.
January 14, 2012, Jefferson Center celebrates one of the most extraordinary and innovative jazz pianists and composers of the 20th century, Roanoke’s native son, DON PULLEN.
Join us for the Don Pullen 70th birthday tribute, celebrating the rich spirit of Don Pullen’s music with a stellar ensemble, featuring the Kennedy Center's Jazz Advisor Jason Moran on piano, Christian McBride on bass, James Carter and Hamiet Bluiett, on saxophones, Nasheet Waits on drums, and video excerpts of Don Pullen in concert. The tribute will also include photos of Don's life and career, an art exhibit, a special presentation from poet Nikki Giovanni and the launch of a children’s music scholarship fund in Don Pullen’s honor at the Music Lab.
Pullen drew from his roots in gospel, blues, rhythm &
blues, classical technique, the full spectrum and span of jazz,
avant-garde explorations, merged with African, Latin, and Native
American music. Pullen’s concept and sound was thrilling and original,
playing inside and outside, allowing dissonance to swing and freer music
to work in time, in the groove of the blues and rhythm & blues,
weaving all together as one. The beauty, power, stunning creativity and
virtuosity of Pullen’s music mesmerized audiences worldwide.
Find out more about Don Pullen and his life's work here www.donpullen.de
“Don
Pullen plays the piano with such pounding intensity…he unleashes tidal
waves of harmonic energy… the work of a modern master at peak form.
Pullen often makes his clusters dance… This is music of uncompromising
originality.” - People Magazine ‘89
“Don Pullen was, in my opinion, one of the finest artists and human beings of the 20th century.” - Katea Stitt Coordinator, Jazz Oral History Program, Smithsonian Institution
“Mr. Pullen, a brilliant improviser with a vast understanding of many musical forms, including not only jazz, but gospel and classical music, stunned audiences with his intense, elegant melodies and technical brilliance. His performances were inspired and inspiring, with great clarity and spiritual depth.” - Jenneth Webster Producer, Lincoln Center Out-Of-Doors, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
“In Don Pullen, we have a special musician whose genius was his ability, unlike anyone before him, to dominate the whole spectrum of this musical genre known as Jazz. His technique encompassed the fire, passion and spirit, along with a creativity that was so unique, unlike any other pianist in the 20th century. He is and was that important.” - Kunle Mwanga, Producer, Earth Art Productions
“…a tour de force…one of the jazz world’s true super talents.” - Ebony Magazine
http://www.donpullen.de/collect/evertext.htm
Don Pullen: A Song Everlasting
HOME
The following text was published first in "jazz journal", London, November 1996.
by Mike Bond
Why was he not more widely known among the jazz fraternity at large, especially in the UK, where mention of Pullen's name will often produce only blank looks from many dedicated jazz lovers? Geoffrey Smith, before playing Pullen's solo version of his own Ode To Life as a memorial tribute on BBC Radio 3's Jazz Record Requests, introduced him as a man who knew all about soul' and added that on each occasion he played that Pullen recording on air it elicited 'a pile of queries'. An ironic epitaph for a man who had worked in this music for 30 years and more, who in the last 15 years of his life made a succession of superb creative recordings, but was still struggling for a proper appreciation at his death. His loss will probably weigh heavier upon the jazz world as time progresses and more peo ple come to know the work he has left behind.
Despite his determination to perpetuate the swinging tradition, Pullen was often wrongly pigeonholed by those who only knew of his early work, and believed him locked in the sixties mould; his playing style, to his chagrin, was often compared to, and said to have been influenced by, Cecil Taylor, despite Don's frequent denials. The immense difference in the style and attitude to music of these two players was masked by some superficial similarities of technique, especially in the early recordings made by Pullen, before he abandoned the avant garde to its slide away from jazz into Europeanised backwater. Valerie Wilmer, in a note added to Pullen's Guardian obituary, even implied that contrary to what is normally assumed, Cecil Taylor was actually influenced by the young Pullen.
Don's own music, although always at the forefront of experimentation, was firmly in the Armstrong, Hines, Ellington, Parker, Gillespie, Monk, Mingus, true straight line of jazz development. He retained from his free playing his extended technique, most elements of which he had perfected for himself and was unable to an alyse, but used this to fashion complex and daring solos, whilst still leaning hard on rhythm and melody. He often laid down a steady left hand beat which would have been the envy of a swing pianist from an earlier era, over which he carefully placed single notes, groups of chords, or lines of fast glissandi in which every note was precisely chosen, seamlessly weaving them into his solos with an astonishing speed and accuracy that led one pianist to comment that Don must have been born not just with left and right brain segments, but with two brains. Pullen was capable of playing with heart-stopping intensity, and, especially in solo performance, of an almost overwhelming emotion.
Classically trained, but with a background of black church music, Don became aware of jazz whilst at college and at once felt the pull of this music. It was natural that a young man already equipped with a brilliant technique should seek out other musicians of his own generation who, as in every art, were ready to push at the current boundaries as they sought to develop their own styles and free themselves of what they considered to be the clichés of the past. Unfortunately many young artists lose respect for the past and are led by their own over-confidence into irrelevant clichés of their own; this was a trap Pullen was determined to avoid. It has been said that his introduction of gospel and blues elements into his free playing led to him being castigated as a reactionary by some of the avant gardists.
Alongside the period of experimentation, his experience broadened as he earned his living for many years as accompanist, both on piano and Hammond organ, to singers and R & B soloists. By the time he was invited to join Charles Mingus's working group in the early seventies, he was fully prepared. Recordings Mingus made during this period show that he had found a pianist who was at once totally individual and fully suited to Mingus's personal view of music and who, whilst learning within its context, was able to assist in moving it forward.
This Mingus group later contained George Adams on tenor, who was destined to spend many years playing with Don, co-leading their own group. A record from this period, Mingus Moves (1973), a CD re-issue having the bonus of extra tracks, is unmistakably late period Mingus. It features some Pullen compositions and also gives promise of future riches when the Pullen/Adams collaboration cames to fulfilment and maturity in their own quartet.
After the death of Mingus, a European promoter seeing potential in the Mingus connection encouraged the formation of a group consisting of Pullen, Adams, and Dannie Richmond, with Cameron Brown added on bass. This was a quartet which, instead of providing bebop rehash, played a fresh music leading on from that of Mingus, soaked with passion, anger, love, and the blues, displaying a determination never to rest on the easy option. Pullen and Adams, driven by Richmond, riding on the steadiness and warmth of Brown, produced innumerable solos of excitement and power. The members of this George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet melded so well that they played together for 10 years, often being cited as the best small group of the eighties, especially by those who had witnessed their sometimes awesome pow er in live concerts, as they fed on the appreciation of the audience. This was a power the musicians themselves thought was never quite captured in their studio recordings.
Playing some standards, but mostly compositions of Pullen and Adams, with an occasional piece by Richmond, the group moved easily between styles, never coasting, always stretching, playing everything from - simple blues, ballad songs, and joyful anthems to jagged themes interspersed with free playing. It is probable that Adams never played so well as when backed by Pullen, Richmond and Brown. Unfortunately, despite minority acclaim, Pullen's over-publicised avant g arde past, and a common first-impression of difficulty in the group's music restricted their appeal. However, those unfamiliar with the group's work should not be afraid to approach it; apparent complexities soon simplify themselves and reveal their roots, and the listener is rewarded with satisfying and swinging musical experiences; even those whose interests tend to the blues, not jazz, have rapidly converted after hearing typical work by the quartet.
There are many albums available by the quartet, all of high standard, and it is difficult to decide which to recommend; the earliest have been reissued on CD and the most recent are still available. Perhaps Life Line (1981) then Song Everlasting (1987), spanning a large part of the quartet's period together, will make good introductions. The sound of the quartet may initially surprise but the best tastes are often those which are acquired, and two or three listenings to any album will soon reveal its delights.
The group's last two studio albums Breakthrough (1986) and Song Everlasting (1987), were released on Blue Note, and saw the name of the group change to the Don Pullen/George Adams quartet, but there was no change in the quality of the music.
The four musicians believed their signing by Blue Note, a major US jazz label, meant that at last they would reach the wider audience, respect and economic success (in jazz terms) their music merited, but they were disappointed. This may have been a contributory factor in the decision to disband the quartet, although at the time Don stated that his colleagues were having difficulties with some of his compositions. The decision to break up the group had been taken before the death of Dannie Richmond in 1988, and, after using a substitute drummer to complete those gigs previously booked, this group, so tightly interlocked in its playing, split apart, any hopes of partial resurrection dashed by the death of George Adams in 1992, and today only Cameron Brown, the erstwhile steady heartbeat, remains alive.
As well as the studio records by the quartet, several live albums were made. Although these are excellent at demonstrating the group's uninhibited concert performances and risk-taking, the recording balance and quality often fail to do justice to the music; sadly the best live recorded sound was on a Berlin recording made after Richmond's death with Lewis Nash on drums.
After the quartet had broken up, Pullen's recording career as a Blue Note artist took a new turn with the release of a remarkable and frequently beautiful trio album, New Beginnings (1988). This album with Tony Williams on drums, and Gary Peacock on bass, was considered by many to be one of the finest piano trio albums ever made; it allowed Pullen to explore new territory and revisit old, whilst utilising every facet of his technique, which, at times, apart from the unorthodox fingerings needed for his super-fast runs, included crossing hands to play counter melodies with his fingers and rhythmic blocks of chords with both elbows, achieving an effect something like a duet by supremely coordinated players. Don was now often working in trio format, and the success of New Beginnings led to another trio album, Random Thoughts, the following year.
In the early nineties, Don received a commission which led to the formation of his own last recorded group, The AfricanBrazilian Connection (ABC), which matched his love of swinging music with cross-cultural multi-rhythms in an extended saxophone quartet.
Within this group, Pullen featured fewer of his own tunes and his playing gradually became less aggressive and essentially more hopeful. Despite its African beginnings, some jazz lovers feel uncomfortable with these complex rhythms, but there will be no problems with the playing of Pullen, or Carlos Ward on alto sax; for excitement and release try the CD Kele Mou B ana (199 1), or for tranquillity and compassion, the CD Ode To Life (1993), dedicated to the memory of George Adams.
Shortly before Don's death, Blue Note released Live ... Again, also from 1993, featuring the ABC group in a live performance playing pieces from both of their two previous CDs. The sleevenote for this recording anguishes over Pullen's illness, suggesting that these were to be Pullen's own musical last words, but Blue Note had in hand the CD Sacred Common Ground which they issued after his death. This was the result of Don's last commission, to produce a dance score which fused jazz with American Indian music.
Like many true artists, Don Pullen had a humility which made him believe his own intense creativity was a gift from some higher power; this fitted well with the basically spiritual nature of the traditional native American music, and he produced a score in which the melody and loose swing of jazz, and the changing and hypnotic drum beats of the Indian music combine, interweave and separate in a work of deep feeling, outside of any category. But what astonishes is the power, life, and hope of Don's own playing on the recording, which he had completed, against all odds, in the last stages of his illness, only a few weeks before his death.
The solo piano recording is often more sought and debated by other pianists than the general public, but Pullen was no exception in enjoying the challenge of playing alone and demonstrating his skills. In fact, many of his admirers were waiting for a new solo album to express his cur-rent opinions on the art when the details of his terminal illness became known; but unless something lurks in a dark comer of a recording company's vault, we shall have no more.
Pullen's commitment to swing was exemplified by his playing solo concerts with a number of small bells around one ankle, like a Morris dancer's rig, to provide extra tinkling rhythms as he stamped his foot. However, the emotion of his solo playing could, like Parker's, build up an almost unbearable tension in the audience, generating shouts of approval during his performance from people desirous of gaining some relief.
Perhaps Pullen's solo piano work, covering the full range of his playing from 'inside' to 'outside', is not the place for a first look into the wonderful body of work left behind by this outstanding musician. That being said, Evidence Of Things Unseen (1983) is a fine statement of his solo playing at that period, with limited excursions into the unknown.
Many of the qualities of Pullen's beautiful unaccompanied playing, if not the complete range, can be found in abbreviated form in his solos on Jane Bunnett's New York Duets (1989), a delightful album on which he accompanies Canadian saxist/flautist Bunnett through a set including Monk tunes and originals by both players, the added bonus being a brilliant recording of a truly excellent piano. Their version of Make Someone Happy is one of those definitive versions, like the Ellington/Coltrane Sentimental Mood, against which others are subsequently judged, and Pullen's solo on the opening Bye-ya is as much a tribute to Monk as the realisation of his own thoughts.
However, an earlier duo recording, Melodic Excursions (1982), featuring Pullen and Adams, is an uncompromising album; although it provides much excitement and fine playing, their fierce take-noprisoners attack on some numbers conveys an anger which suggests that listening to this record is best postponed until familiarity with their other work has fully prepared the listener to take up their challenges.
Over the years, Pullen recorded with many other groups, both his own and others-he made three other albums with Jane Bunnett's group-and it is probable that someone's favourite album is not mentioned above or listed below, for I have tried only to give an overview of his progress; nor I have troubled to discuss his many excellent compositions, often inspired by family, friends and other musicians: any of the albums I recommend displays his talent in this area.
Pullen was a pianist who always had something to say about the world and its peoples. His playing strength was that he was grounded in tradition but unafraid of change; too much has been made of his unorthodox technique, for this was not just a bag of showy tricks but a workaday tool to extend his range, similar to that perfected on other instruments by innovative jazz musicians over the last 70 years. After the standing ovation he was accorded at a solo concert I attended, during which he had utilised his crossed-hands technique on one number, a woman sitting nearby asked disbelievingly, 'How can he play with his elbows and stay in tune?' She had, perhaps inadvertently, got to the heart of Pullen's playing; his amazing technique was always subservient to the music he played. He has left a silence in the world it will be hard to fill.
I had hoped to enjoy new creations by Don Pullen for many more years of my own life and if this brief note encourages one person to seek out his music, even if it has to be after he has gone, it may serve as a small token of my gratitude for the pleasure Pullen's playing has brought to me, for his work has become an important part of my musical life. If I had to choose one album for a desert island I would be undecided whether to make an emotional or intellectual selection. Today, I am hesitating between Life Line and New Beginnings but I get so much joy and satisfaction from all those in my list, and the many others, that tomorrow's choices might be quite different.
I believe all the facts to be accurate but data having got lost in a reshuffle left me working sometimes from memory. I apologise for any errors and omissions. Subjective opinions are mine alone.
Some recommended Don Pullen recordings
This small selection is
merely an introduction to Don's work on piano. I have not included any of his
bluesdrenched organ playing.
Charles Mingus: Mingus Moves (1973)
George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet: Don't Lose Control (1979); Earth Beams (1980); Life Line (1981); Live At The Village Vanguard (1983);
Don Pullen/George Adams Quartet: Song Everlasting (1987)
Don Pullen Trio: New Beginnings (1988)
Don Pullen Solo Piano: Evidence Of Things Unseen (1983)
Jane Bunnett-Don Pullen: New York Duets (1989)
Don Pullen's Afro-Brazilian Connection: Live... Again (1993)
http://www.donpullen.de/collect/bluenote.htm
Photo: Jimmy Katz/Giant Steps - From "Billboard"
May 20, 1995
May 20, 1995
https://www.jeffcenter.org/donpullen
The Life and Music of Don Pullen
Shaftman Performance Hall • A Jefferson Center Jazz Series Show
Saturday, January 14, 2012 - 8:00pm
Online tickets for this show are now closed. For seating availability please call the box office directly 540-345-2550, x1 after 6 pm.
Thank you.
Don Pullen: December 25, 1941 – April 22, 1995
January 14, 2012, Jefferson Center celebrates one of the most extraordinary and innovative jazz pianists and composers of the 20th century, Roanoke’s native son, DON PULLEN.
Join us for the Don Pullen 70th birthday tribute, celebrating the rich spirit of Don Pullen’s music with a stellar ensemble, featuring the Kennedy Center's Jazz Advisor Jason Moran on piano, Christian McBride on bass, James Carter and Hamiet Bluiett, on saxophones, Nasheet Waits on drums, and video excerpts of Don Pullen in concert. The tribute will also include photos of Don's life and career, an art exhibit, a special presentation from poet Nikki Giovanni and the launch of a children’s music scholarship fund in Don Pullen’s honor at the Music Lab.
Jefferson Center & Harrison Museum of African American Culture have partnered to bring you the "Don Pullen Art Exhibit" inside Jefferson Center. The exhibit is FREE to the public and will remain open, Monday - Friday, 9am - 4:30pm through Saturday's Don Pullen Tribute Concert on January 14th.
The exhibit to honor the life and work of Don Pullen includes paintings from artist Bill Warrell, photos provided by friends, family and professional photographer Michael Wilderman
highlighting Pullen's childhood experiences in Roanoke and his
performances as a touring musician, a video documentary featuring
Pullen, as well as letters of support from Pullen's family, friends and
fans collected during a movement in New York City to memorialize the
late jazz great.
The Don Pullen Arts Exhibit is the result of a partnership between Jefferson Center and the Harrison Museum of African American Culture and is hosted by Norfolk Southern and Chamber Music America.
Find out more about Don Pullen and his life's work here www.donpullen.de
************************
“Don Pullen was, in my opinion, one of the finest artists and human beings of the 20th century.” - Katea Stitt Coordinator, Jazz Oral History Program, Smithsonian Institution
“Mr. Pullen, a brilliant improviser with a vast understanding of many musical forms, including not only jazz, but gospel and classical music, stunned audiences with his intense, elegant melodies and technical brilliance. His performances were inspired and inspiring, with great clarity and spiritual depth.” - Jenneth Webster Producer, Lincoln Center Out-Of-Doors, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
“In Don Pullen, we have a special musician whose genius was his ability, unlike anyone before him, to dominate the whole spectrum of this musical genre known as Jazz. His technique encompassed the fire, passion and spirit, along with a creativity that was so unique, unlike any other pianist in the 20th century. He is and was that important.” - Kunle Mwanga, Producer, Earth Art Productions
“…a tour de force…one of the jazz world’s true super talents.” - Ebony Magazine
http://www.donpullen.de/collect/evertext.htm
Don Pullen: A Song Everlasting
HOME
The following text was published first in "jazz journal", London, November 1996.
by Mike Bond
The late Don Pullen held to a creed which many share; jazz should
swing. After some years at the forefront of the free movement of the sixties, he
moved to more traditional jazz forms, realising, as he said himself, many of the
avant garde practitioners could not swing, and thus had no contact with the
roots of jazz. 'I like it down and dirty,' he once said. His death, in April
1995, robbed this music of one of its finest and most individual pianistic
voices; the hopes for his eventual recovery, held by those who knew of his
illness and that he was undergoing treatment, proved in vain. At the time of his
death, Pullen was a fully contemporary musician, seen at his peak in a range of
innovative work recorded since the early nineties.
Why was he not more widely known among the jazz fraternity at large, especially in the UK, where mention of Pullen's name will often produce only blank looks from many dedicated jazz lovers? Geoffrey Smith, before playing Pullen's solo version of his own Ode To Life as a memorial tribute on BBC Radio 3's Jazz Record Requests, introduced him as a man who knew all about soul' and added that on each occasion he played that Pullen recording on air it elicited 'a pile of queries'. An ironic epitaph for a man who had worked in this music for 30 years and more, who in the last 15 years of his life made a succession of superb creative recordings, but was still struggling for a proper appreciation at his death. His loss will probably weigh heavier upon the jazz world as time progresses and more peo ple come to know the work he has left behind.
Despite his determination to perpetuate the swinging tradition, Pullen was often wrongly pigeonholed by those who only knew of his early work, and believed him locked in the sixties mould; his playing style, to his chagrin, was often compared to, and said to have been influenced by, Cecil Taylor, despite Don's frequent denials. The immense difference in the style and attitude to music of these two players was masked by some superficial similarities of technique, especially in the early recordings made by Pullen, before he abandoned the avant garde to its slide away from jazz into Europeanised backwater. Valerie Wilmer, in a note added to Pullen's Guardian obituary, even implied that contrary to what is normally assumed, Cecil Taylor was actually influenced by the young Pullen.
Don's own music, although always at the forefront of experimentation, was firmly in the Armstrong, Hines, Ellington, Parker, Gillespie, Monk, Mingus, true straight line of jazz development. He retained from his free playing his extended technique, most elements of which he had perfected for himself and was unable to an alyse, but used this to fashion complex and daring solos, whilst still leaning hard on rhythm and melody. He often laid down a steady left hand beat which would have been the envy of a swing pianist from an earlier era, over which he carefully placed single notes, groups of chords, or lines of fast glissandi in which every note was precisely chosen, seamlessly weaving them into his solos with an astonishing speed and accuracy that led one pianist to comment that Don must have been born not just with left and right brain segments, but with two brains. Pullen was capable of playing with heart-stopping intensity, and, especially in solo performance, of an almost overwhelming emotion.
Classically trained, but with a background of black church music, Don became aware of jazz whilst at college and at once felt the pull of this music. It was natural that a young man already equipped with a brilliant technique should seek out other musicians of his own generation who, as in every art, were ready to push at the current boundaries as they sought to develop their own styles and free themselves of what they considered to be the clichés of the past. Unfortunately many young artists lose respect for the past and are led by their own over-confidence into irrelevant clichés of their own; this was a trap Pullen was determined to avoid. It has been said that his introduction of gospel and blues elements into his free playing led to him being castigated as a reactionary by some of the avant gardists.
Alongside the period of experimentation, his experience broadened as he earned his living for many years as accompanist, both on piano and Hammond organ, to singers and R & B soloists. By the time he was invited to join Charles Mingus's working group in the early seventies, he was fully prepared. Recordings Mingus made during this period show that he had found a pianist who was at once totally individual and fully suited to Mingus's personal view of music and who, whilst learning within its context, was able to assist in moving it forward.
This Mingus group later contained George Adams on tenor, who was destined to spend many years playing with Don, co-leading their own group. A record from this period, Mingus Moves (1973), a CD re-issue having the bonus of extra tracks, is unmistakably late period Mingus. It features some Pullen compositions and also gives promise of future riches when the Pullen/Adams collaboration cames to fulfilment and maturity in their own quartet.
After the death of Mingus, a European promoter seeing potential in the Mingus connection encouraged the formation of a group consisting of Pullen, Adams, and Dannie Richmond, with Cameron Brown added on bass. This was a quartet which, instead of providing bebop rehash, played a fresh music leading on from that of Mingus, soaked with passion, anger, love, and the blues, displaying a determination never to rest on the easy option. Pullen and Adams, driven by Richmond, riding on the steadiness and warmth of Brown, produced innumerable solos of excitement and power. The members of this George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet melded so well that they played together for 10 years, often being cited as the best small group of the eighties, especially by those who had witnessed their sometimes awesome pow er in live concerts, as they fed on the appreciation of the audience. This was a power the musicians themselves thought was never quite captured in their studio recordings.
Playing some standards, but mostly compositions of Pullen and Adams, with an occasional piece by Richmond, the group moved easily between styles, never coasting, always stretching, playing everything from - simple blues, ballad songs, and joyful anthems to jagged themes interspersed with free playing. It is probable that Adams never played so well as when backed by Pullen, Richmond and Brown. Unfortunately, despite minority acclaim, Pullen's over-publicised avant g arde past, and a common first-impression of difficulty in the group's music restricted their appeal. However, those unfamiliar with the group's work should not be afraid to approach it; apparent complexities soon simplify themselves and reveal their roots, and the listener is rewarded with satisfying and swinging musical experiences; even those whose interests tend to the blues, not jazz, have rapidly converted after hearing typical work by the quartet.
There are many albums available by the quartet, all of high standard, and it is difficult to decide which to recommend; the earliest have been reissued on CD and the most recent are still available. Perhaps Life Line (1981) then Song Everlasting (1987), spanning a large part of the quartet's period together, will make good introductions. The sound of the quartet may initially surprise but the best tastes are often those which are acquired, and two or three listenings to any album will soon reveal its delights.
The group's last two studio albums Breakthrough (1986) and Song Everlasting (1987), were released on Blue Note, and saw the name of the group change to the Don Pullen/George Adams quartet, but there was no change in the quality of the music.
The four musicians believed their signing by Blue Note, a major US jazz label, meant that at last they would reach the wider audience, respect and economic success (in jazz terms) their music merited, but they were disappointed. This may have been a contributory factor in the decision to disband the quartet, although at the time Don stated that his colleagues were having difficulties with some of his compositions. The decision to break up the group had been taken before the death of Dannie Richmond in 1988, and, after using a substitute drummer to complete those gigs previously booked, this group, so tightly interlocked in its playing, split apart, any hopes of partial resurrection dashed by the death of George Adams in 1992, and today only Cameron Brown, the erstwhile steady heartbeat, remains alive.
As well as the studio records by the quartet, several live albums were made. Although these are excellent at demonstrating the group's uninhibited concert performances and risk-taking, the recording balance and quality often fail to do justice to the music; sadly the best live recorded sound was on a Berlin recording made after Richmond's death with Lewis Nash on drums.
After the quartet had broken up, Pullen's recording career as a Blue Note artist took a new turn with the release of a remarkable and frequently beautiful trio album, New Beginnings (1988). This album with Tony Williams on drums, and Gary Peacock on bass, was considered by many to be one of the finest piano trio albums ever made; it allowed Pullen to explore new territory and revisit old, whilst utilising every facet of his technique, which, at times, apart from the unorthodox fingerings needed for his super-fast runs, included crossing hands to play counter melodies with his fingers and rhythmic blocks of chords with both elbows, achieving an effect something like a duet by supremely coordinated players. Don was now often working in trio format, and the success of New Beginnings led to another trio album, Random Thoughts, the following year.
In the early nineties, Don received a commission which led to the formation of his own last recorded group, The AfricanBrazilian Connection (ABC), which matched his love of swinging music with cross-cultural multi-rhythms in an extended saxophone quartet.
Within this group, Pullen featured fewer of his own tunes and his playing gradually became less aggressive and essentially more hopeful. Despite its African beginnings, some jazz lovers feel uncomfortable with these complex rhythms, but there will be no problems with the playing of Pullen, or Carlos Ward on alto sax; for excitement and release try the CD Kele Mou B ana (199 1), or for tranquillity and compassion, the CD Ode To Life (1993), dedicated to the memory of George Adams.
Shortly before Don's death, Blue Note released Live ... Again, also from 1993, featuring the ABC group in a live performance playing pieces from both of their two previous CDs. The sleevenote for this recording anguishes over Pullen's illness, suggesting that these were to be Pullen's own musical last words, but Blue Note had in hand the CD Sacred Common Ground which they issued after his death. This was the result of Don's last commission, to produce a dance score which fused jazz with American Indian music.
Like many true artists, Don Pullen had a humility which made him believe his own intense creativity was a gift from some higher power; this fitted well with the basically spiritual nature of the traditional native American music, and he produced a score in which the melody and loose swing of jazz, and the changing and hypnotic drum beats of the Indian music combine, interweave and separate in a work of deep feeling, outside of any category. But what astonishes is the power, life, and hope of Don's own playing on the recording, which he had completed, against all odds, in the last stages of his illness, only a few weeks before his death.
The solo piano recording is often more sought and debated by other pianists than the general public, but Pullen was no exception in enjoying the challenge of playing alone and demonstrating his skills. In fact, many of his admirers were waiting for a new solo album to express his cur-rent opinions on the art when the details of his terminal illness became known; but unless something lurks in a dark comer of a recording company's vault, we shall have no more.
Pullen's commitment to swing was exemplified by his playing solo concerts with a number of small bells around one ankle, like a Morris dancer's rig, to provide extra tinkling rhythms as he stamped his foot. However, the emotion of his solo playing could, like Parker's, build up an almost unbearable tension in the audience, generating shouts of approval during his performance from people desirous of gaining some relief.
Perhaps Pullen's solo piano work, covering the full range of his playing from 'inside' to 'outside', is not the place for a first look into the wonderful body of work left behind by this outstanding musician. That being said, Evidence Of Things Unseen (1983) is a fine statement of his solo playing at that period, with limited excursions into the unknown.
Many of the qualities of Pullen's beautiful unaccompanied playing, if not the complete range, can be found in abbreviated form in his solos on Jane Bunnett's New York Duets (1989), a delightful album on which he accompanies Canadian saxist/flautist Bunnett through a set including Monk tunes and originals by both players, the added bonus being a brilliant recording of a truly excellent piano. Their version of Make Someone Happy is one of those definitive versions, like the Ellington/Coltrane Sentimental Mood, against which others are subsequently judged, and Pullen's solo on the opening Bye-ya is as much a tribute to Monk as the realisation of his own thoughts.
However, an earlier duo recording, Melodic Excursions (1982), featuring Pullen and Adams, is an uncompromising album; although it provides much excitement and fine playing, their fierce take-noprisoners attack on some numbers conveys an anger which suggests that listening to this record is best postponed until familiarity with their other work has fully prepared the listener to take up their challenges.
Over the years, Pullen recorded with many other groups, both his own and others-he made three other albums with Jane Bunnett's group-and it is probable that someone's favourite album is not mentioned above or listed below, for I have tried only to give an overview of his progress; nor I have troubled to discuss his many excellent compositions, often inspired by family, friends and other musicians: any of the albums I recommend displays his talent in this area.
Pullen was a pianist who always had something to say about the world and its peoples. His playing strength was that he was grounded in tradition but unafraid of change; too much has been made of his unorthodox technique, for this was not just a bag of showy tricks but a workaday tool to extend his range, similar to that perfected on other instruments by innovative jazz musicians over the last 70 years. After the standing ovation he was accorded at a solo concert I attended, during which he had utilised his crossed-hands technique on one number, a woman sitting nearby asked disbelievingly, 'How can he play with his elbows and stay in tune?' She had, perhaps inadvertently, got to the heart of Pullen's playing; his amazing technique was always subservient to the music he played. He has left a silence in the world it will be hard to fill.
I had hoped to enjoy new creations by Don Pullen for many more years of my own life and if this brief note encourages one person to seek out his music, even if it has to be after he has gone, it may serve as a small token of my gratitude for the pleasure Pullen's playing has brought to me, for his work has become an important part of my musical life. If I had to choose one album for a desert island I would be undecided whether to make an emotional or intellectual selection. Today, I am hesitating between Life Line and New Beginnings but I get so much joy and satisfaction from all those in my list, and the many others, that tomorrow's choices might be quite different.
I believe all the facts to be accurate but data having got lost in a reshuffle left me working sometimes from memory. I apologise for any errors and omissions. Subjective opinions are mine alone.
Some recommended Don Pullen recordings
Charles Mingus: Mingus Moves (1973)
George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet: Don't Lose Control (1979); Earth Beams (1980); Life Line (1981); Live At The Village Vanguard (1983);
Don Pullen/George Adams Quartet: Song Everlasting (1987)
Don Pullen Trio: New Beginnings (1988)
Don Pullen Solo Piano: Evidence Of Things Unseen (1983)
Jane Bunnett-Don Pullen: New York Duets (1989)
Don Pullen's Afro-Brazilian Connection: Live... Again (1993)
http://www.donpullen.de/index.htm
http://www.donpullen.de/biogra_e.htm
Don Pullen: Biography
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Don Pullen developed an extended technique for the piano and a strikingly individual style, post-bop and modern, but retaining a strong feeling for the blues. He produced acknowledged masterworks of jazz in a range of formats and styles, crossing and mixing genres long before this became almost commonplace. By chance, unfortunately for his future commercial success if not for his musical development, his first contact on arriving on the New York scene was with the free players of the 1960s, with whom he recorded. It was some years later before his abilities in more straight ahead jazz playing, as well as free, were revealed to a larger audience. The variety in his music made him difficult to pigeonhole, but he always displayed a vitality that at first hearing could shock but would always engross and delight his audience.
Don Gabriel Pullen was born (on 25th December 1941 not in 1944 as sometimes said) and raised in Roanoke, Virginia, USA. Growing up in a musical family, he learned the piano at an early age, played and worked with the choir in his local church, and was heavily influenced by his cousin, professional jazz pianist Clyde "Fats" Wright. He had some lessons in classical piano but knew little of jazz, being mainly aware of church music and the blues. Don sought to play in a very fast style and managed to develop his own unorthodox technique allowing him to execute extremely fast runs while maintaining the melodic line.
Don left Roanoke for Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina to study for a medical career but soon he realised that his only true vocation was music. After playing with local musicians and being exposed for the first time to records of the major jazz musicians and composers he abandoned his medical studies. He set out to make a career in music, desirous of playing like Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy.
In 1964 he went to Chicago for a few weeks where he encountered Muhal Richard Abrams' philosophy of making music, then headed for New York, where he was soon introduced to avant-garde saxist Guiseppi Logan, and absorbed more of the philosophy of creative music. Logan invited Don to play piano on his two record dates, 'Guiseppi Logan'(October 1964) and 'More Guiseppi Logan' (May 1965) on ESP, both exercises in structured free playing. Although these were Guiseppi Logan's recordings, most critical attention was given to the playing of percussionist Milford Graves and the unknown Don Pullen with his astonishing mastery of his instrument.
Subsequently he and Milford Graves formed a duo and their piano and drums concert at Yale University in May 1966 was recorded. They formed their own independent SRP record label to publish the result as two LPs. These were the first records to bear Don Pullen's name, second to Milford's. Although not greatly known in the United States, these avant-garde albums were well received in Europe and most copies were sold there. These have never been reissued after the first run sold out.
Finding little money in playing avant-garde jazz, Don began to play the Hammond organ to extend his opportunities for work, transferring elements of his individual piano style to this instrument. During the remainder of the 1960s and early the 1970s, he played with his own organ trio in clubs and bars, worked as self-taught arranger for record companies, and accompanied various singers, including Arthur Prysock and Nina Simone.
He suffered at this time, and for a long time after, from two undeserved allegations; the first (despite his grounding in the church and blues) that he was purely a free player and thus unemployable in any other context, the second that he had been heavily influenced by Cecil Taylor or was a clone of Cecil Taylor, to whose playing Don's own bore a superficial resemblance. Don strenuously denied that he had any link with Cecil Taylor, stating that his own style had been developed in isolation before he ever heard of Cecil. But the assertion of Cecil's influence continued to the end of Don's life, and persists even to this day.
He appeared on no more commercial recordings until 1971 and 1972 when he played organ on three recordings by blues altoist Williams, one being issued under the title of a Pullen composition, "Trees And Grass And Things".
In 1973 drummer Roy Brooks introduced Don to bassist Charles Mingus, and after a brief audition he took over the vacant piano chair in the Mingus group; when a tenor saxophone player was needed, Don recommended George Adams; subsequently Dannie Richmond returned on drums; and these men, together with Jack Walrath on trumpet, formed the last great Mingus group.
Being part of the Mingus group and appearing at many concerts and on three Mingus studio recordings, 'Mingus Moves' (1973), 'Changes One' and 'Changes Two' (both 1974), gave great exposure to Don's playing and helped to persuade audiences and critics that Pullen was not just a free player. Two of his own compositions 'Newcomer' and 'Big Alice' were recorded on the 'Mingus Moves' session but 'Big Alice' was not released until a CD re-issue many years later. However musical disagreements with Mingus caused Don to leave the group in 1975.
Don had always played piano with bass and drums behind him, feeling more comfortable this way, but in early 1975 he was persuaded to play a solo concert in Toronto. This was recorded and as 'Solo Piano Album' became the first record issued under Don's name alone. Among other pieces, it contains 'Sweet (Suite) Malcolm' declared a masterpiece by Cameron Brown, Don's long time associate of later years.
There was now growing awareness of Don's abilities but it was the European recording companies that were prepared to preserve it. In 1975 an Italian record company gave Don, George Adams and Dannie Richmond the opportunity to each make a recording under his own name. All three collaborated in the others' recordings. In the same year, Don made two further solo recordings in Italy for different record labels; 'Five To Go' and 'Healing Force', the latter being received with great acclaim. He became part of the regular seasonal tours of American musicians to Europe, playing in the avant-garde or free mode.
In 1977, Don was signed by a major American jazz record company, Atlantic. This led to two records, the untypical 'Tomorrow's Promises' and the live 'Montreux Concert'. But after these, Don's association with Atlantic was terminated and he returned to European companies for three recordings under his own name or in partnership; 'Warriors', and 'Milano Strut' in '78 and 'The Magic Triangle' in '79. These, especially the startling 'Warriors' with its strong 30 minute title track, have remained in the catalogues over the years.
Meanwhile he recorded with groups led by Billy Hart (drums), Hamiet Bluiett, (baritone sax.), Cecil McBee (bass), Sunny Murray (drums) and Marcello Melis (bass). On the formation of the first Mingus Dynasty band Don occupied the piano chair and appeared on their recording 'Chair In The Sky' in 1979, but he soon left the band, feeling the music had diverged too far from Mingus' intentions.
In late 1979 Don, George Adams and Dannie Richmond were booked to play as a quartet for a European tour of a few weeks duration. Don invited Cameron Brown to join them on bass. They were asked to bill themselves as a Mingus group but not wanting to be identified as mere copyists they declined and performed as the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet. They played more structured music than Don normally favoured, but the immediate rapport among them led to the group touring the world with unchanged personnel until the death of Dannie Richmond in early 1988. From very early in their first tour in 1979, and until 1985, the quartet made a dozen remarkable recordings for European labels, both studio and live. Of these, 'Earth Beams' (1980), 'Live At The Village Vanguard' (1983) and 'Decisions' (1984) provide typically fine examples of their work at that period.
Although highly regarded in Europe, the quartet felt they were not well enough known in America so in 1986 they signed to record for the American Blue Note label for which they recorded 'Breakthrough' (1986) and 'Song Everlasting' (1987). Beginning the Blue Note contract with great hope of increased fame and success, (as shown by the title of their first Blue Note album) they became disillusioned by the poor availability of these two records. Although the power of their live concerts maintained their reputation as one of the most exciting groups ever seen, the music recorded for the Blue Note sessions was at first deemed 'smoother' than on their European recordings, and took time to achieve the same high reputation.
After the death of Dannie Richmond the quartet fulfilled their remaining contracted engagements with a different drummer and then disbanded in mid 1988. Their music, usually original compositions by Don, George and Dannie, had ranged from blues, through ballads, to post-bop and avant-garde. The ability of the players to encompass all these areas, often within one composition, removed any sameness or sterility from the quartet format. Except for the early recordings on the vanished Horo label, their European recordings remained regularly available, unlike those made for Blue Note.
During the life of the Quartet, Don also made a duo recording with George Adams 'Melodic Excursions' (1982) and made three recordings under his own name, two further solo albums, the acclaimed 'Evidence Of Things Unseen' (1983) and 'Plays Monk' (1984), then with a quintet, another highly praised recording 'The Sixth Sense' (1985). He also recorded with (alphabetically) Hamiet Bluiett; Roy Brooks, the drummer who introduced him to Mingus; Jane Bunnett; Kip Hanrahan; Beaver Harris; Marcello Melis; and David Murray.
All Don's future recordings under his own name would now be for Blue Note. On 16th December 1988 he went into the studio with Gary Peacock (bass) and Tony Williams (drums) to make his first trio album 'New Beginnings', which astonished even those familiar with his work and became widely regarded as one of the finest trio albums ever recorded. He followed this in 1990 with another trio album 'Random Thoughts', in somewhat lighter mood, this time with James Genus (bass) and Lewis Nash (drums).
In late 1990 Don added a new element to his playing and his music with the formation of his African Brazilian Connection ('ABC'). This featured, as well as Don, Carlos Ward (alto sax), Nilson Matta (bass), Guilherme Franco and Mor Thiam (percussion) in a group which mixed African and Latin rhythms with Jazz. Their exciting first album "Kele Mou Bana" was released in 1991. Their second, but very different, album of 1993, 'Ode To Life' was a tribute to George Adams, who had died on 14th November 1992, containing Don's heartfelt and moving composition in George's memory 'Ah George We Hardly Knew Ya'. A third album 'Live .... Again' recorded in July 1993 at the Montreux festival, but not released until 1995. This featured 'Ah George...' and other songs from their previous albums, in somewhat extended versions. Don achieved more popular and commercial success with this group than with any other. In 1993 'Ode To Life' was fifth on the U.S. Billboard top jazz album chart.
During the last few years of his too short life, Don toured with his trio, with his African Brazilian Connection, as a solo artist, and with groups led by others, making much fine music, but sadly not enough records. The greatest loss to his admirers was that although his solo playing seemed to grow in power, he was never invited to record another solo album. Meanwhile he made important contributions to concerts and recordings of groups led by others, such as (alphabetically) Jane Bunnett (notably their fine Duo album 'New York Duets); Bill Cosby(!); Kip Hanrahan; David Murray (on organ, the best recorded example of his organ style being on Murray's 1991 'Shakill's Warrior'); Maceo Parker (on organ); Ivo Perelman; Jack Walrath (again on organ). He also toured and recorded with the group 'Roots' from its inception.
Don's final project was a work combining the music of his African Brazilian Connection (extended by Joseph Bowie on trombone) with a choir and drums of Native Americans. In 1994 Don was diagnosed with the lymphoma which eventually ended his life but, despite this, he put great physical effort into completing the this important and deeply felt composition. In early March 1995 he played on the recording 'Sacred Common Ground', displaying all his usual power although being but a few weeks away from his untimely death, returning as always to his heritage of the blues and the church. Unable himself to play at the live premiere, his place at the piano was taken by D D Jackson, with whom Don discussed the music from his hospital bed shortly before his death. He died on 22nd April 1995.Don composed many pieces with melodies and rhythms which linger in the mind, often they were portraits or memories of people he knew. All were published by his own company Andredon but because he himself for a long time suffered from neglect musically so did many of his compositions. His most well known are the humorous 'Big Alice' (for an imaginary fan), the incredible 'Double Arc Jake' (for his son and Rahsaan Roland Kirk), the passionate 'Ode To Life' (for a friend), and the aforementioned lament 'Ah George We Hardly Knew Ya'. Occasionally he wrote pieces with a religious feeling, such as 'Gratitude' and 'Healing Force', or to highlight the plight of Afro-Americans such as 'Warriors', 'Silence = Death, and 'Endangered Species: African American Youth'. Following the assassination of Afro-American activist Malcolm X, Don had written a suite dedicated to Malcolm's memory but this required more instrumental resources than a normal jazz group provides, and only the piano parts of this were ever recorded. Except for the 'Plays Monk' album, Don almost exclusively featured his own compositions on his own recordings, until his time with the African Brazilian Connection. His compositions are well represented on the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet recordings, but such compositions by Don which were recorded by others, were usually performed by those who had known and worked with him.
Although Don was able to play the piano in almost any style, (the attribute that had made him so important to the wide-ranging music of Mingus) and sometimes gave the impression that there were two pianists at the keyboard, he caused most astonishment by his ability to place extremely precise singing runs or glissandi over heavy chords, reminiscent of traditional blues, while never losing contact with the melodic line. His technique for creating these runs, where he seemed to roll his right hand over and over along the keys, received much comment from critics, was studied by pianists, and heavily filmed and investigated, but could never be totally explained, even by Don who had developed it. His piano technique can be seen on the DVDs 'Mingus At Montreux 1975' and on 'Roots Salutes The Saxophones'. But it is better not to concentrate too much on his technique, especially now that he is gone from among us, and to pay attention to his depth of feeling and the intensity of improvisations, whether these were suggested by the song itself or engendered by the moment. It is easy to forget that those who come to love his music from his records may be totally unaware of his playing method. Even at his concerts, only a minority of the audience would be fully able to see his hands moving along the keyboard and be aware of exactly how he revealed the emotional outpourings of his soul.
Don Pullen, like many other of greatest jazz musicians, had given his life to the music and was greatly missed after his death. Several musicians wrote songs as personal tributes to his memory, including Jane Bunnett, Cameron Brown, D D Jackson, and David Murray.
David Murray and D D Jackson made a whole album 'The Long Goodbye' dedicated to Don.
In 2005 Mosaic issued a set of four long unavailable Blue Note recordings, 'Breakthrough' and 'Song Everlasting' by the 'The Don Pullen/George Adams Quartet, and 'New Beginning' and 'Random Thoughts' by Don's own trio.
Review: Charles Mingus’ ‘Jazz in Detroit’ Sheds Light on an Overlooked Era
A hefty new box set, recorded live in 1973, captures the legendary bassist at the helm of a short-lived yet top-tier band
by
Hank Shteamer
November 2, 2018
Rolling Stone
A new Charles Mingus box set, 'Jazz in Detroit,' features nearly
four hours of excellent live material, recorded on a single night in
1973. Hans Kumpf/Jazz Workshop
If you’re going by the bare facts alone, Jazz in Detroit / Strata Concert Gallery / 46 Selden is strictly for Charles Mingus completists. The new five-CD set includes nearly four hours of previously unreleased live material by the legendary bassist, all recorded on a single night in February 1973 for Detroit public radio. Unlike, say, John Coltrane’s recently unearthed Lost Album, Jazz in Detroit doesn’t date from a pivotal period in the leader’s career, feature an iconic lineup or introduce a wealth of unfamiliar repertoire.
But what looks marginal on paper turns out to be sheer joy coming out of the speakers, thanks in large part to Mingus’ lesser-known yet enormously gifted sidemen: tenor saxophonist John Stubblefield, trumpeter Joe Gardner, pianist Don Pullen and drummer Roy Brooks. Even Mingus aficionados likely won’t have heard this exact lineup, since only Pullen and Brooks worked with the bassist for more than a few months. Still, as heard in these performances of Mingus staples (“Pithecanthropus Erectus,” “Peggy’s Blue Skylight,” “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk”) and a couple rarities, their grasp of the core elements of the bassist’s sound world — earthy swing; lush ensemble playing; roomy, impassioned solos — is extraordinary.
Pullen in particular nearly steals the show. The pianist would later become a star of the jazz vanguard, but at the time of Jazz in Detroit, one of his earliest documented performances with Mingus, he was still an up-and-comer. His prior experience playing everything from high-energy free improv to deep-pocket soul-jazz came in handy here. On “Celia,” a tender, melodious piece that dated back to 1957, his solo moves from crisp bebop to clanging, cyclonic expressionism and back, recalling the astounding technique of earlier Mingus pianist Jaki Byard. Later, underneath Stubblefield’s solo, the pianist tosses little firecrackers of abstraction the saxist’s way, urging his bandmate toward increasingly ecstatic peaks. And on a lengthy version of Duke Ellington’s “C Jam Blues,” he leads Mingus and Brooks into a wild free-jazz interlude.
The set’s more conventional moments are just as satisfying. “Dizzy Profile” — a piece apparently written for Dizzy Gillespie but not found on any other known Mingus recording — gives the players a chance to stretch out on an old-school ballad. Pullen plays a gorgeous rubato intro, leading into a dreamy, vocal-like theme led by Gardner. Solos by the trumpeter and Stubblefield show off each player’s timeless laid-back lyricism. Likewise, on the 26-minute “Noddin’ Ya Head Blues,” the whole band digs heartily into Mingus and Brooks’ slinky groove. (Late in the performance, the drummer puts down his sticks for a charmingly folksy turn on musical saw.) These pieces show that while many of Mingus’ peers had embraced plugged-in fusion by ’73, the bassist was still more than content with the fundamentals of acoustic small-group jazz.
Beyond the music itself, which sounds generally excellent for a live recording, Jazz in Detroit also has added historical value. A series of between-set radio segments interspersed with the music offer a window into the lively Detroit scene jazz at that time. We hear MC Bud Spangler, broadcasting from on site, giving directions to the Strata Concert Gallery — the home of Strata Records, an important local label of the period that DJ and Jazz in Detroit project coordinator Amir Abdullah has spent years researching and reviving — offering free admission to anyone who can bring a backup amp down to the show, bemoaning the sparse attendance and plugging upcoming installments in the Jazz in Detroit series, which also featured Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and hometown luminaries like the Contemporary Jazz Quintet, for which Spangler was the sometime drummer.
Spangler also sits down for an extensive interview with Roy Brooks. Mingus’ then-drummer was a Detroit local and, as heard on this set, an outstanding player who by this time had also worked with jazz A-listers such as Wes Montgomery, Pharoah Sanders, Jackie McLean and Horace Silver. (Jazz in Detroit is sourced from Brooks’ own tapes, provided by the drummer’s widow, Hermine.) He describes the challenge of performing Mingus’ “very demanding” music — no doubt more so because Brooks was stepping into a role most often occupied by the bassist’s longtime drummer and musical soulmate Dannie Richmond — and the evolving audience for jazz at the time, marked by an influx of young fans who “a couple of years ago were really into the acid-rock scene.” His generally optimistic tone runs counter to the standard wisdom that jazz was on the rocks in the early Seventies.
This supplemental material only amplifies the sense that Jazz in Detroit is a niche document. As a slice of life, though, shedding light on both Mingus’ day-to-day activities during an overlooked period and the practice of jazz outside the New York limelight, it’s a treasure. Beyond the context, the music speaks for itself. Even a listener totally unfamiliar with Mingus, not to mention his undervalued collaborators, could jump into Jazz in Detroit‘s time machine and feel right at home in the bassist’s rich musical universe.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-don-pullen-1621743.html
Obituary: Don Pullen
Pullen's always expansive solos were full of dynamic contrasts, moving like quicksilver from thundering violence (his hands were frequently blistered from his playing) into soothing and delicate melody. His ultra-fast playing and heavily clustered notes were paradoxically accurate, despite their heavy-fisted delivery. Pullen was also a gifted organist. His free playing was authenticated by the fact that he knew all about the earlier jazz piano styles, and was thus able to demand audience attention for his very liberal experiments.
Pullen began his career by playing gospel music in church and then by earning his living with rhythm and blues musicians, in his case during the Sixties with Syl Austin, the tenor sax player. He was impressed first as a teenager by the piano playing of Art Tatum and then by the saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman. While his multi-note playing drew from Tatum, his work seemed to contain many of the elements of the music of the maverick pianist Cecil Taylor. But Pullen never spoke of any impact or influence from Taylor. "I don't like piano players much," he said. He was taught by his cousin Clyde Wright, who had been accompanist to Dinah Washington.
While still working for Austin in the R&B field Pullen had played with the avant-garde tenor player Albert Ayler and had found his mentor in the alto saxophonist Giussepi Logan. Logan, who had also come along the R&B path, played free jazz with the tenor players Archie Shepp and Pharaoh Sanders and had become a focal point of influence for young players.
Amongst them was the drummer Milford Graves, who Pullen first met when he joined Logan's quartet in 1964. He made his first recording with the group the following year. With Graves, Pullen developed a unique way of duetting with drummers which was to be a style characteristic for the rest of his career. Graves freed the drums from the traditional time-keeping role and was able to create musical conversations with the piano. Both men depended on unusual effects, with Pullen pitting intense flurries of notes against Graves's intricate patterns. They recorded as a duo in 1966.
Despite Pullen's palpably outstanding qualities, he was unable to gain a proper footing in jazz at the time, and for the next decade worked obscurely as accompanist to the singers Arthur Prysock and then Nina Simone. By 1972 he had joined the bassist Charlie Mingus's coterie and displayed his talents on three of Mingus's best albums of the time. "That band was wild. Hamiett Bluett would point his sax right at Mingus and blow him away, and then we'd all start to blow. Finally Mingus said 'Y'all aren't going to leave me out of this. It's my band!' "
During his time with Mingus, Pullen also became the pianist with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1974) and began his first of a string of solo piano albums in 1977 when Atlantic issued his solo set from the Montreux Jazz Festival.
While with Mingus, Pullen had worked with the tenor saxist George Adams and their friendship and musical partnership became the most important element in their musical lives. When Mingus died in 1979 a group of musicians who had played with him formed a band called Mingus Dynasty to take Mingus's music as a starting point for invention. Pullen toured both with the band and as a soloist and that same year he and Adams pulled away from the main group to form a quartet with Mingus's main musical associate, Dannie Richmond, and the bassist Cameron Brown. As soon as it was formed, the group recorded three albums within the space of 48 hours. "It was a fiery band," Pullen said. "Fire was its middle name because we had Dannie there."
The band stayed together for 10 years of blistering music, with Richmond being replaced on his death in 1988 by the drummer Lewis Nash. It toured world-wide, much called on for festival performances. Although many numbers ran on for 15 minutes and more, there was a discipline about the music, and the two leaders never seemed able to unload all the ideas which were fighting to come out. They used standards and many original themes, too.
"It's fascinating to sit down and play without any written music," Pullen said. "But it also has limitations. One of them is that it all begins to sound alike. I found constantly playing free did lead to a bit of a dead end. Good writing gives you a direction."
The band signed a contract with Blue Note in 1986, and both Pullen and Adams made albums for the label on their own. The quartet disbanded in 1989 and Adams died in 1992.
Pullen continued to record for Blue Note and work with his trio, his work becoming more conventional but no less eloquent.
Donald Gabriel Pullen, pianist, organist: born Roanoke, Virginia 25 December 1941; died New York City 22 April 1995.
https://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/2011/12/721.html
Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation
Don Pullen, late pianist with an arts exhibit tribute
December 26 is a birthday I share with some great musicians — John Scofield and the late Quinn Wilson,
for two. But yesterday I was thinking of a Christmas baby:
Don Pullen, pianist/composer
12/25/41-4/22/95
A Don Pullen Arts Exhibit
opens today in Roanoke, VA, his home town, produced by the Jefferson
Center and Harrison Museum of African American Art, and that’s a fine
tribute. But I hate to think that Pullen’s music may be falling out of
consciousness or access.
His very first records with drummer Milford Graves are extremely rare (self-produced, from a concert at Yale, as Nommo), and so is some of the brilliant playing he did with others, like A Well Kept Secret by drummer Beaver Harris’ 360 Degree Experience, with bari saxist Hamiett Bluett.
Pullen’s most prominent position in someone else’s ensemble was his stint with Charles Mingus resulting in the albums Changes One and Changes Two, leading after Mingus’ death to a quartet with saxophonist George Adams, bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Dannie Richmond. I think Pullen’s finest album may be The Sixth Sense, for which I wrote liner notes. After writing a Down Beat feature about Pullen, I was invited to the residency at the Yellow Springs Institute where he organized his breakthrough African Brazillian Connection, and I annotated a couple of more albums, including Sacred Common Ground, on which he forged a bridge between jazz and Native American drumming/chanting by the Chief Cliff Singers. In ’97 I wrote notes to The Best of Don Pullen: The Blue Note Years, which perhaps can serve as an introduction, a valedictory, a spur to remembering. The man had music in his soul.
howardmandel.com
His very first records with drummer Milford Graves are extremely rare (self-produced, from a concert at Yale, as Nommo), and so is some of the brilliant playing he did with others, like A Well Kept Secret by drummer Beaver Harris’ 360 Degree Experience, with bari saxist Hamiett Bluett.
Pullen’s most prominent position in someone else’s ensemble was his stint with Charles Mingus resulting in the albums Changes One and Changes Two, leading after Mingus’ death to a quartet with saxophonist George Adams, bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Dannie Richmond. I think Pullen’s finest album may be The Sixth Sense, for which I wrote liner notes. After writing a Down Beat feature about Pullen, I was invited to the residency at the Yellow Springs Institute where he organized his breakthrough African Brazillian Connection, and I annotated a couple of more albums, including Sacred Common Ground, on which he forged a bridge between jazz and Native American drumming/chanting by the Chief Cliff Singers. In ’97 I wrote notes to The Best of Don Pullen: The Blue Note Years, which perhaps can serve as an introduction, a valedictory, a spur to remembering. The man had music in his soul.
At his best—and at the piano, he was always at his best — Don Pullen was peerless. The proof endures in these grooves: nine original pieces which Pullen, with dedicated compatriots, realized during the last phase of his career, a seven-year association with Blue Note Records. Exhibiting his consistently virtuosic level of subtlety, elegance and sheer excellence, this compilation album is an admirable introduction, rather than a summation, of a person’s musical expression that’s rich with light, insight and grace for whomsoever is lucky enough to listen.
It is music of a multitude of dimensions, as Don was an inspired keyboard artist, an unforgetttable improviser, a composer of many tuneful and moving themes, a daring band leader and an impeccable accompanist. It’s music which — from its moment of creation, evermore — bears its makers’ intensity, ultimately joyous spirit, and hard-won wisdom regarding life. Pullen’s playful lines, his fully voiced chords and his unique keyboard glisses contain and releasefeelings through vivid narrative, insightful portraiture and probing reminiscence. Pullen’s pieces seem to allow him to sing arias, drum thunder, joust, feast and love across an ocean of octaves, to reach from his childhood in Roanoke, Virginia to far beyond his death in New York in 1995.
Hear: Powerful rhythms pulse up from the ground beneath Pullen’s feet through his wiry, upright and eventually swaying torso (he might be wearing ankle bells, a hiply cut future-suit, or a torreador’s brocaded black jacket and tailored slacks), down his muscled forearms, into his strong wrists, cigar-thick fingers, calloused tips, palms and hand-heels. Those rhythms summon and are shaped by impulses from Pullen’s heart and soul, providing the power of the bright-skipping, soon sweeping clusters he rains upon the keys. Never more than a few beats into a chorus, musical ideas start to stream from Pullen, flowing towards us with solace and cheer. Here’s music to bask in, to absorb and recall.
By 1979, when Don Pullen came to record his Blue Note debut (Breakthrough, by the Don Pullen-George Adams Quartet, a collective drummer Dannie Richmond liked to brag that he led, and bassist Cameron Brown supported as a stalwart oak), he was a mature jazzman, age 36, accomplished if not completely fulfilled. Son of a Southern family, with a background in gospel church music, semi-classical parlor recitals and soul music studio sessions and encouragement from Muhal Richard Abrams, co-founder of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Pullen had made his mark as a member of the mid ’60s New York City underground. He’d debuted on ESP Disks with multi-instrumentalist Guiseppi Logan, and independently issued ferocious, exhaustive duets with drummer Milford Graves taped live-in-concert at Yale University. In 1971, Pullen left his steady gig with Nina Simone to join Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers briefly and land in the final great ensemble led by bassist Charles Mingus. A Mingus band member until ’75, he appears on Changes One and Changes Two.
All the while Don took gigs under his own name: appearing unadvertised, often on organ, in black clubs of New York’s Harlem and nearby New Jersey, recording solo for a Canada’s Sackville label and Japanese Trio, some spotty combo albums for Atlantic and several adventurous productions for Italy’s Black Saint-Soul Note combine. In the process he’d become a pre-eminent figure in avant gut-bucket and new world/jazz/blues circles, collaborating with Hamiet Bluiett, David Murray, Beaver Harris, John Scofield, Olu Dara, the Art Ensemble of Chicago (Fundamental Destiny) and Kip Hanrahan, among many others.
Tenor saxophonist George Adams, who Pullen had brought to Mingus, painted in similarly vibrant hues (evident in both burning and ballad idioms), and after Mingus’s demise the Pullen-Adams (Richmond/Brown) Quartet cut 10 albums over 10 years, their final two for Blue Note. When Dannie Richmond died and Adams fell ill, Pullen set out to establish his trio with New Beginnings (here represented by its title track and “Jana’s Delight,” probably Pullen’s finest romp). A happy studio meeting with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Tony Williams, New Beginnings raised Pullen’s visibility and furthered his songwriting rep. Random Thoughts, its follow up with his working-band bassist Jame Genus and drummer Lewis Nash, also comprised all original melodies (including “Andre’s Ups and Downs” for his son, and “Indio Gitano”) that depicted people and places near and dear to Don.
In 1990, through a grant administered by the Yellow Spring Institute of Art in Chester Springs, PA, Pullen was afforded a unique opportunity to further his global musical explorations.
“I’ve always had an affinity for Latin music and African music,” he explained at the end of a two-week residency during which he’d convened the African Brazilian Connection, a band which embraced musicians from Cameroon, Panama, Sao Paulo and Senegal. “The very first composition I ever wrote when I was a kid was a samba, or something like that. I play those tunes very easily, and they feel very good. The music of Brazil and flamenco and the music we play in America — blues and jazz and so forth — all has its roots in Africa. That’s why we can all play together.”
Following the ABC’s three albums and tour of Europe, as well as the diagnosis of his terminal disease and an initial course of treatment, Pullen pursued the musical threads that link all peoples to Sacred Common Ground, a historic collaboration with the Chief Cliff Singers, Native Americans from the Salish-Kootenai Reservation in Montana. “Reservation Blues,” co-writtten by Pullen and the Singers’ leader Mike Kenmille, turns on what I remember from the session itself as not an edit but a perfect fermata. At the end of the Indians’ chanting there’s a pregnant pause . . then, picking up the same earth beat, Don rolls out a long blue road under the moans and protests of alto saxophonist Carlos Ward and trombonist Joe Bowie, atop the pocket of bassist Santi Debriano and drummer J.T. Lewis, accented by percussionist Mor Thiam.
Pullen’s playing there, and the grandeur of his ABC’s track “El Matador,” suggests something of his resistence of the mediocre and the debilitating, his ferocious will to create a beautiful, enduring mark. Perhaps no piece from Pullen’s oeuvre so aptly shows his sublime touch, delicacy and sense of emotional nuance as his unaccompanied rendition of “Ode To Life,” which ends this collection. Originally written and dedicated to George Adams, this rendition was its composer’s meditation on his own mortality, and proceeds through a range of moods to
come to rest in serenity.
The Best of Don Pullen: The Blue Notes Years represents a heartfelt selection of the man’s music by some of the people who were closest to him, notably his companion Jana Haimisohn, his agent Eric Hanson, his children André (his eldest), Don Jr., Tracy and Keith and his Blue Note producer Michael Cuscuna. It’s just a fraction of Pullen’s best, though, about an eighth of his Blue Note output — substantial, yet just a step in taking his full measure.What retrospective, however complete, can ever take an artist’s full measure? Here’s my standard: I still very much enjoy listening to Don Pullen.
howardmandel.com
Don Pullen: Discography
1 . Giuseppi Logan: The Guiseppi Logan Quartet (5.10.1964)
2 . Giuseppi Logan: More (1.5.1965)
4 . Milford Graves/Don Pullen: Nommo (Volume 2) (30.4.1966)
5 . Charles Williams: Charles Williams (1971)
6 . Charles Williams: Trees And Grass And Things (1971)
7 . Charles Williams: Stickball (1972)
8b . Charles Mingus: Jazz in Detroit (13.2.1973)
8 . Charles Mingus: Mingus Moves (29.-31.10.1973)
9 . Charles Mingus: At Carnegie Hall (19.1.1974)
10. Marcello Melis: Perdas De Fogu (13./14.6.1974)
11. Charles Mingus: Changes One (27.12.-28.12.1974)
12. Charles Mingus: Changes Two (28.12.-30.12.1974)
-- . Charles Mingus: Passions of a Man (sampler,1973-1974)
-- . Charles Mingus: Les Incontournables (Warner Jazz) (sampler,1973-1974)
-- . Charles Mingus: I Grandi del Jazz (sampler,1974)
-- . Charles Mingus: Pasije Cloveka (sampler,1973-74)
13. Charles Mingus: Live At Montreux (video,20.7.1975)
14. Charles Mingus: Stormy&Funky Blues (1972-1977)
15. Don Pullen: Solo Piano Album (24.2.1975)
16. Don Pullen: Jazz A Confronto (21.3.1975)
17. George Adams: Jazz A Confronto (29.3.1975)
-- . Adams Pullen Quartet: First Recordings (Sampler of 16+17)
18. Dannie Richmond: Jazz A Confronto (28.7.1975)
19. George Adams: Suite For Swingers (28.7.1975)
20. Don Pullen: Five to Go (29.7.1975)
21. Don Pullen/Sam Rivers: Capricorn Rising (16.-17.10.1975)
22. Don Pullen: Healing Force (23.10.1975)
23. Sam Rivers: Black Africa! Villalago (24.7.1976)
24. Don Pullen: Tomorrow's Promises (1976/77)
25. Billy Hart: Enchance (2-3/1977)
26. Don Pullen: Montreux Concert (12.7.1977)
27. Herbie Mann: Mellow (7/1977)
27a. Herbie Mann: Mellow / Hold On, I'm Coming (7/1977)
28. Hamiet Bluiett: SOS (15.8.1977)
28a. Hamiet Bluiett: Im/Possible To Keep (15.8.1977)
29. David Murray: Vol. I (Penthouse Jazz) (18.8.1977)
30. David Murray: Vol. II (Holy Seige on Intrigue) (18.8.1977)
-- . David Murray: Flowers for Albert (sampler of 29/30, 18.8.1977)
31. Hamiet Bluiett: Resolution (11/1977)
32. Hamiet Bluiett: Orchestra, Duo And Septet (11-12/1977)
33. Cecil McBee: Alternate Spaces (1977)
34. Sunny Murray: Apple Cores (1.1.1978)
36. Marcello Melis: Free to Dance (5/1978)
37. Don Pullen: Milano Strut (12/1978)
38. Mingus Dynasty: Chair in the Sky (9.7.-10.7.1979)
39. Don Pullen/Joseph Jarman/Don Moye: The Magic Triangle (24.-26.7.1979)
40. George Adams/Don Pullen: All That Funk (2.11.1979)
41. George Adams & Don Pullen: Don't Lose Control (2.-3-11.1979)
42. George Adams/Don Pullen: More Funk (2.11.1979)
43. Beaver Harris: Negcaumongus (7.12.1979)
45. George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet: Earth Beams (3.-5-8.1980)
46. George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet: Life Line (5.-6.4.1981)
47. George Adams & Don Pullen: Melodic Excursions (6./9.6.1982)
48. Marcello Melis: Angedras (8/1982)
49. George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet: City Gates (27.-28.3.1983)
52. Don Pullen: Evidence of Things Unseen (28.-29.9.1983)
53. George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet: Decisions (2./3.2.1984)
-- . George Adams: Ballads (sampler,1978-1984)
54. Don Pullen: Plays Monk (11.10.1984)
55. David Murray: Children (27.10./15.11.1984)
56. George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet: Live in Tokyo (14.11.1984)
57. George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet: Live at Montmartre (4./5.4.1985)
58. Don Pullen Quintet: The Sixth Sense (12./13.6.1985)
59. Don Pullen-George Adams Quartet: Breakthrough (30.4.1986)
60. Hamiett Bluiett&Concept: Live At Carlos I (8/1986)
62. Don Pullen-George Adams Quartet: Song Everlasting (21.4.1987)
63. Roy Brooks: Duet In Detroit (2.7.1987)
64. Conjure: Cab Calloway Stands in for the moon (9-10/1987+1-3/1988)
65. Jane Bunnett: In Dew Time (25./26.2.1988)
66. George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet: Jazzb�hne Berlin (3.6.1988)
67. Don Pullen: New Beginnings (16.12.1988)
68. Jane Bunnett/Don Pullen: New York Duets (8/1989)
69. Maceo Parker: Roots Revisited (1989)
70. Paul Haines: Darn It! (1/1990)
71. Bill Cosby: Where You Lay Your Head (1990)
72. Don Pullen: Random Thoughts (23.3.1990)
73. David Murray: Shakill's Warrior (1.-2.3.1990)
74. John Scofield: Live 3 Ways (video,23.5.1990)
75. Kip Hanrahan: Tenderness (1988-90)
-- . Kip Hanrahan: American Clave Anthology (sampler,1987-1990)
76. Jane Bunnett Quintet: Live at Sweet Basil (1990)
77. Ivo Perelman: Children Of Ibeji (22.5./9.-10.7.1991)
78. Art Ensemble Of Chicago: Fundamental Destiny (1.6.1991)
79. Don Pullen & The African Brasilian Connection: Kele Mou Bana (25.-26.9.1991)
80. Roots: Salutes the Saxophone (18.-19.10.1991)
81. Roots: Stablemates (14.-15.2.1992)
82. Roots: Salute to the Saxophone (video,24.3.1992)
83. Jack Walrath: Serious Hang (4.4.1992)
84. Kip Hanrahan: Exotica (2-5/1992)
85. Don Pullen & The African Brazilian Connection: Ode To Life (18.-19.2.1993)
86a. Don Pullen and The African Brazilian Connection: Radio Edits (13.7.1993)
87. Jane Bunnett: The Water is Wide (18./19.8.1993)
88. David Murray Quartet: Shakill's II (5.-6.10.1993)
89. Kip Hanrahan: All Roads Are Made of the Flesh (1985-1994)
90. Don Pullen: Sacred Common Ground (8./9.3.1995)
91. Kip Hanrahan: A Thousand Nights And A Night (1 - Red Nights) (1994-1996)
92. Kip Hanrahan: A Thousand Nights And A Night (Shadow Nights 1) (1994-1996)
93. Kip Hanrahan: A Thousand Nights And A Night (Shadow Nights 2) (1994-1998)
-- . Don Pullen: The best of the BLUE NOTE Years (sampler,1986-95)
-- . Don Pullen: Mosaic Select (sampler,1986-1990)
-- . Don Pullen: The Complete Remastered Recordings On Black Saint & Soul Note (sampler,1975-85)
-- . V.A. (several sampler,1978-1993)
Mathieu, Bill (1966): Milford Graves Speaks Words. Down Beat, November 1966 (USA).
Pullen, Don and Graves, Milford (1967): New Afro-American Cultural Revolutionary. Liberator, January 1967.
Mathieu, Bill (1967): Record Reviews: Milford Graves - Don Pullen. Down Beat, April 1967 (USA).
Smith, Bill (1970): Don Pullen. Coda, December 1970 (Canada).
Jost, Ekkehard (1974): Free Jazz. Graz, 1974 (Austria). Reprint: New York, 1974 (USA).
Pellicciotti, Giacomo (1975): Mingus Dynasty. (Interviews). Jazz Magazine 233, May/June 1975 (France). (Link to "Don Pullen - Ode To Life" by J.-L.Chrisment)
Pellicciotti, Giacomo (1975): Mingus Dynasty. (Translation into English by Mike Bond)
Frazer, Vernon (1976): Don Pullen - an interview. Coda, October 1976 (Canada).
Goddet, Laurent (1976): Free Blues: Don Pullen. Jazz Hot 331, October 1976 (France). (Link to "Don Pullen - Ode To Life" by Jean-Louis Chrisment)
Goddet, Laurent (1976): Free Blues: Don Pullen. (Translation into English by Mike Bond)
Smith, Arnold Jay (1977): Don Pullen. Down Beat, July 1977 (USA).
M.L.G.G. (1977): Don Pullen, un leader nato. Ciao 2001, August 1977 (Italy).
Wilmer, Valerie (1977,1992): As Serious as your life. (UK).
Wilmer, Valerie (1978): Pullen: Echoes of the Sixties. Melody Maker, 25.3.1978 (UK).
Wilmer, Valerie (2001): Coltrane und die jungen Wilden: Die Entstehung des New Jazz. (Übersetzung von "As serious as your Life" durch Rüdiger Hipp)(Austria).
Gamble, Pete (1980): Don Pullen - Beyond the mainstream. Jazz Journal, June 1980 (UK).
Thébault, Yves (1980): Don Pullen Interview. Jazz Magazine 280, September 1980 (France). (Link to "Don Pullen - Ode To Life" by Jean-Louis Chrisment)
Thébault, Yves (1980): Don Pullen Interview. (Translation into English by Mike Bond)
Steiner, Ken (1980): The 360° Music Experience. Interview with Beaver Harris and Don Pullen. Coda, October 1980 (Canada).
Kühn, Gerhard (1981): Dritte Bob-Generation: George Adams-Don Pullen. Jazz Podium, May 1981 (Germany).
Davis, Michael (1982): Don Pullen - Mingus Sideman, Club Organist, Solo Pianist. Keyboard, September 1982 (Canada).
Stokes, W.Royal (1984): Playing from Experience. Washington Post, 14.10.1984 (USA).
Mandel, Howard (1985): Don Pullen - Piano inside and out. Down Beat, June 1985 (USA).
Macnie, Jim (1986): Don Pullen - A romantic avantgardist plays the whole piano. Musician, October 1986 (USA).
Provizer, Norman (1989): Don Pullen - Mastering Muscle and Melody. Jazziz, October 1989 (USA).
Pareles, Jon (1987): Jazz: Don Pullen Group. New York Times, 12.4.1987. (Re-published 23.7.2008) (USA).
Whitehead, Kevin (1989): Don Pullen - Reconciling Opposites. Down Beat, November 1989 (USA).
Gourse, Leslie (1989): Don Pullen. Jazz Times, November 1989.
Mandel, Howard (1989): Don Pullen blindfold test. Down Beat, November 1989 (USA).
Nicholson, Stuart (~1990): Post-Bob and Beyond Chapter: The George Adams / Don Pullen Quartet. Jazz: The 1980s Resurgence.
McLeod, Harriet (1991): Pianist Pullen It Together in Jazz World. Richmond Times, 14.11.1991 (USA).
Pahnelas, Bill (1991): Pullen Group offer world Music. Richmond Times, 16.11.1991 (USA).
DeBell, Jeff (1991): A Key Player Modern Jazz Pianist Don Pullen Is Looking Forward to a Hometown Concert. The Roanoke Times, 13.12.1991 (USA).
Williamson, Seth (1991): Roanoke's Don Pullen Brings House Down in Hometown Show. The Roanoke Times, 14.12.1991 (USA).
Himes, Geoffrey (1992): Jazz Pianist's Tropical Mix. Washington Post, 25.9.1992 (USA).
Moon, Tom (1992): The Subtitle Artistry of Don Pullen. Philadelphia Inquirer, 29.9.1992 (USA).
Jackson, Reuben (1992): Blending Cultures Makes 'Connection'. Washington Post, 1.10.1992 (USA).
Gonzalez, Fernando (1992): No Pinning Pullen Down: Blues to Ballet, Latin to African. Boston Globe, 25.12.1992 (USA).
Watson, Philip (1993): Invisible Jukebox: Don Pullen. Wire, March 1993 (UK).
Mümpfer, Klaus (1993): Don Pullen (cover photo). Jazz Podium, December 1993 (Germany).
Carnegie, M.D. (1994): Still Showing The Way - Jazzman Don Pullen never lets Avant-Garde Fall Behind. Washington Post, 14.10.1994 (USA).
Watrous, Peter (1995): Don Pullen, Pianist, 53, Dies; Distinctive Improviser in Jazz. New York Times, 24.4.1995 (USA).
Donahue, Ann (1995): Jazz Pianist Don Pullen dies at 53. The Roanoke Times, 25.4.1991 (USA).
Broecking, Christian (1995): Diskurs World Music: Don Pullen, Steve Turre. taz, 12.5.1995 (Germany).
Voce, Steve (1995): Obituary: Don Pullen. The Independent, May 30, 1995 (UK).
-,- (1995): Don Pullen - A Remembrance. Jazz Now, June 1995.
Gourse, Leslie (1995): Don Pullen 1944-1995. Jazziz, July 1995 (USA).
Mandel, Howard (1995): Don Pullen 1941-1995. Down Beat, July 1995 (USA).
McRae, Barry (1995): Don Pullen. Jazz Journal, July 1995 (UK).
-, - (1995): Obituary. Jazz Times, July 1995.
Atkins, Ronald (1995): Don Pullen - Playing free piano with clenched fingers. Guardian Newspaper, 1995 (UK).
-, - (1995): Farewell to Don Pullen - Selected Discography. Swing Journal, August 1995 (Japan).
Filtgen, Gerd (1995): Der Pianist Don Pullen - Zwischen Blues, Bop, Ethno-Sounds und Free. Fono Form, September 1995 (Germany).
Bunnett, Jane / Cramer, Larry (1995): A memorial celebration and some personal reflections. Coda, September/October 1995 (Canada).
Santoro, Gene (1996): Don Pullen: Obituary. The Nation, February 1996.
Bond, Mike (1996): Don Pullen - A Song Everlasting. Jazz Journal, November 1996 (UK).
Jones, LeRoi (1997): The Jazz Avant Garde. In: Lewis Porter(ed.): Jazz - A Century of Change. New York, 1997 (USA).
Mandel, Howard (1999): Future Jazz. New York, 1999 (USA).
Yanow, Scott (?): Don Pullen. All Music Guide To Jazz.
Milkowski, Bill (2002): Jane Bunnett on Don Pullen and Dewey Redman. Jazz Times, July 2002
Kernfield, Barry (Ed.)(2002): Pullen, Don (Gabriel). The New Grove Dictionary Of Jazz.
Kunzler, Martin (Ed.)(2002): Pullen, Don Gabriel. Jazz Lexikon (Germany).
Janowiak, John (2004): D.D. Jackson on Don Pullen. Down Beat, July 2004 (USA).
Walker, Geoff (2005): Don Pullen. Spinner, Number 72, Summer 2005 (UK).
Sulkin, Karen Adams (2007): Don Pullen - He Played Jazz Piano 'That Pleases Us All. The Roanoke Times, 22.1.2007 (USA).
Sroka, Bradley Joseph (2008): New Beginnings: The Music of Don Pullen and a Recontextualization of the 1960s Jazz Avant Garde. Graduate School Thesis, Newark, May 2008 (USA).
Simon, Francois-René (2010): Don Pullen. Jazz Magazine, June 2010 (France).
http://www.jazzviews.net/don-pullen-ndash-richardrsquos-tune.html
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Jazz Views
https://www.wbur.org/npr/570834686/don-pullen-on-piano-jazz
http://www.jazzviews.net/don-pullen-ndash-richardrsquos-tune.html
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Jazz Views
DON PULLEN – Richard’s Tune
Delmark Records: Originally released as Sackville SK 3008
Don Pullen, solo piano; recorded 1975 in Toronto
This is Don Pullen’s first album recorded in his name and was released originally as Solo Piano Album. The title track was dedicated to Muhal Richard Abrams of Art Ensemble of Chicago fame amongst others. Quite usually for the pianist, this track starts out as a clear enunciation of the tune’s melody which melds into a more tonally affluent, percussive and aggressive expression. Suite (Sweet) Malcolm follows: again comes the melody, this breaking into comprehensively free-playing piano, emphasized by a fervent and angry attack on the keys which melts away to understated sadness.
Throughout the album he expresses his curious, improvisational methodology in a variety of ways, employing both free playing and his profound experience in blues and R&B. This skill in mixing and matching diverse genres and styles and applying it to both his compositions and performance was unusual in his day and brought an air of exotically realistic individuality to his music and his playing.
Study Big Alice and its alternate take. It’s a likeable tune, simply expressed and repeatedly, developing slightly in intricacy as it proceeds. The alternate take is a little speedier and strongly echoes the effects of African-American music including Gospel, with its church organ-like choruses: indeed the two versions have transparently different dispositions, achieved elegantly and with vibrant sophistication. One of his favourite compositions, these variations plainly exhibit Don Pullen’s level of innovation and the whole album reveals the strength of his effervescent originality.
Delmark Records: Originally released as Sackville SK 3008
Don Pullen, solo piano; recorded 1975 in Toronto
This is Don Pullen’s first album recorded in his name and was released originally as Solo Piano Album. The title track was dedicated to Muhal Richard Abrams of Art Ensemble of Chicago fame amongst others. Quite usually for the pianist, this track starts out as a clear enunciation of the tune’s melody which melds into a more tonally affluent, percussive and aggressive expression. Suite (Sweet) Malcolm follows: again comes the melody, this breaking into comprehensively free-playing piano, emphasized by a fervent and angry attack on the keys which melts away to understated sadness.
Throughout the album he expresses his curious, improvisational methodology in a variety of ways, employing both free playing and his profound experience in blues and R&B. This skill in mixing and matching diverse genres and styles and applying it to both his compositions and performance was unusual in his day and brought an air of exotically realistic individuality to his music and his playing.
Study Big Alice and its alternate take. It’s a likeable tune, simply expressed and repeatedly, developing slightly in intricacy as it proceeds. The alternate take is a little speedier and strongly echoes the effects of African-American music including Gospel, with its church organ-like choruses: indeed the two versions have transparently different dispositions, achieved elegantly and with vibrant sophistication. One of his favourite compositions, these variations plainly exhibit Don Pullen’s level of innovation and the whole album reveals the strength of his effervescent originality.
https://www.wbur.org/npr/570834686/don-pullen-on-piano-jazz
Don Pullen On Piano Jazz
In this 1989 episode of Piano Jazz, Pullen performs one of his original compositions, "Jana's Delight." He and host Marian McPartland get together for "All The Things You Are."
Originally broadcast in the fall of 1989.
SET LIST
- "Once Upon A Time" (Pullen)
- "The Sixth Sense" (Dean, Pullen)
- "All The Things You Are" (Hammerstein, Kern)
- "Mad About The Boy" (Coward)
- "On Green Dolphin Street" (Kaper, Washington)
- "Jana's Delight" (Pullen)
- "Clothed Woman" (Ellington)
- "Don And Marian's Blues" (McPartland, Pullen)
9(MDAyNzUwMDI2MDEyNTA3MTU5NzcyNTQyNA004))
http://www.jazzvisionsphotos.com/pullen-exhibit.htm
Honoring Don Pullen
From Gospel to the Globe
The Jazz Gallery in NYC hosted this exhibition and a performance series to honor Don Pullen.
The exhibition opened August 24, 1999 as part of the Panasonic Village Jazz Festival.
The Jazz Gallery is at: 290 Hudson Street (below Spring),
NY, NY 10013.
Call (212) 242-1063 for more information.
*******
Don, Charles Mingus, and George Adams at Keystone Korner, S.F., December 1973
During an Afro-Brazilian Connection show, Blues Alley, Washington, DC, March 1993
Charles Mingus, Berkeley, November 1973
My other photos of Don include:
Montage of shots from February 2, 1991
Don playing with Charles Mingus in
Washington Square Park, July 1974
In performance with the Chief Cliff Singers,
October 1994
Don with his Trio, February 25, 1995 and swinging!
Don Pullen
Don Gabriel Pullen (December 25, 1941 – April 22, 1995) was an American jazz pianist and organist. Pullen developed a strikingly individual style throughout his career. He composed pieces ranging from blues to bebop and modern jazz. The great variety of his body of work makes it difficult to pigeonhole his musical style.
Biography
Early life
Pullen was born on December 25, 1941, and raised in Roanoke, Virginia. Growing up in a musical family, he learned the piano at an early age. He played with the choir in his local church and was heavily influenced by his cousin, Clyde "Fats" Wright, who was a professional jazz pianist. He took some lessons in classical piano and knew little of jazz. At this time, he was mainly aware of church music and the blues.[1]
Pullen left Roanoke for Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina to study for a medical career but soon he realized that his true vocation was music. After playing with local musicians and being exposed for the first time to albums of the major jazz musicians and composers he abandoned his medical studies. He set out to make a career in music, desirous of playing like Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy.
Early musical career (1964 to 1972)
In 1964 he went to Chicago for a few weeks, where he encountered Muhal Richard Abrams' philosophy of making music. He then headed for New York, where he was soon introduced to avant-garde saxophonist Giuseppi Logan, who invited Pullen to play piano on his two albums, Giuseppi Logan (ESP, October 1964) and More (ESP, May 1965), both exercises in structured free playing.
Subsequently, Pullen and Graves formed a duo. Their concert at Yale University in May 1966 was recorded. They formed their own independent SRP record label (standing for "Self Reliance Project"[2]) to publish the result as two LPs.[3] These were the first records to bear Pullen's name, second to Milford's. Although not greatly known in the United States, these avant-garde albums were well received in Europe, most copies being sold there. These recordings have never been reissued.[1]
Finding little money in playing avant-garde jazz, Pullen began to play the Hammond organ to extend his opportunities for work, transferring elements of his individual piano style to this instrument. During the remainder of the 1960s and early 1970s, he played with his own organ trio in clubs and bars, worked as a self-taught arranger for record companies, and accompanied various singers including Arthur Prysock, Irene Reid, Ruth Brown, Jimmy Rushing and Nina Simone.[4]
In 1972, Pullen briefly appeared with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.
Pullen often polarized critics and suffered from two undeserved allegations: the first (despite his grounding in the church and blues) that he was purely a free jazz player and thus unemployable in any other context; the second that he had been heavily influenced by Cecil Taylor or was a clone of Taylor, to whose playing Pullen's own bore a superficial resemblance. Pullen strenuously denied that he had any link with Taylor, stating that his own style had been developed in isolation before he ever heard of Taylor. But the assertion of Taylor's influence continued to haunt Pullen to the end of Pullen's life, and persists even to this day.[5]
Pullen appeared on no more commercial recordings until 1971 and 1972 when he played organ on three recordings by altoist Charles Williams, one being issued under the title of a Pullen composition, "Trees And Grass And Things".
Mingus connection (1973 to 1975)
Being part of the Mingus group and appearing at many concerts and on three Mingus studio recordings, Mingus Moves (1973), Changes One and Changes Two (both 1974), gave great exposure to Pullen's playing and helped to persuade audiences and critics that Pullen was not just a free jazz player. Two of his own compositions, "Newcomer" and "Big Alice", were recorded on the Mingus Moves session, but "Big Alice" was not released until a CD reissue many years later. However, musical disagreements with Mingus caused Pullen to leave the group in 1975.[6]
Emergence as a leader (1975 to 1979)
Pullen had always played piano with bass and drums behind him, feeling more comfortable this way, but in early 1975 he was persuaded to play a solo concert in Toronto. This was recorded as Solo Piano Album (Sackville) and became the first record issued under Pullen's name alone. Among other pieces, it contains "Sweet (Suite) Malcolm", declared a masterpiece by Cameron Brown, Pullen's longtime associate of later years.[1]
There was now growing awareness of Pullen's abilities, but it was the European recording companies that were prepared to preserve them. In 1975 an Italian record company gave Pullen, George Adams, and Dannie Richmond the opportunity to each make a recording under his own name. All three collaborated in the others' recordings. In the same year, Pullen made two further solo recordings in Italy, Five To Go (Horo) and Healing Force (Black Saint), the latter being received with great acclaim.[citation needed] He became part of the regular seasonal tours of American musicians to Europe, playing in the avant-garde or free mode.
In 1977, Pullen was signed by a major American record company, Atlantic Records. This led to two records, the atypical Tomorrow's Promises and the live Montreux Concert. But after these, Pullen's association with Atlantic was terminated and he returned to European companies for three recordings under his own name or in partnership: Warriors and Milano Strut in 1978, and The Magic Triangle in 1979. These, especially the startling Warriors with its strong 30-minute title track, have remained in the catalogues over the years.[7]
Meanwhile, he recorded with groups led by Billy Hart (drums), Hamiet Bluiett (baritone sax), Cecil McBee (bass), Sunny Murray (drums) and Marcello Melis (bass). On the formation of the first Mingus Dynasty band Pullen occupied the piano chair and appeared on their recording Chair In The Sky in 1979, but he soon left the band, feeling the music had diverged too far from Mingus' intentions.
George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet (1979 to 1988)
In late 1979 Pullen, Adams, and Richmond were booked to play as a quartet for a European tour of a few weeks' duration. Pullen invited Cameron Brown to join them on bass. They were asked to bill themselves as a "Mingus group", but not wanting to be identified as mere copyists, they declined and performed as the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet. They played music that was more structured than Pullen normally favored, but the immediate rapport among them led to the group touring the world with unchanged personnel until the death of Richmond in early 1988. From very early in their first tour in 1979, and until 1985, the quartet made a dozen recordings for European labels, both in the studio and in concert. Of these, Earth Beams (1980), Live At The Village Vanguard (1983) and Decisions (1984) provide typically fine examples of their work at that period.[8]
Although highly regarded in Europe, the quartet felt they were not well enough known in America, so in 1986 they signed to record for Blue Note Records, for which they recorded Breakthrough (1986) and Song Everlasting (1987). Beginning the Blue Note contract with great hope of increased fame and success, as shown by the title of the first album, they became disillusioned by the poor availability of the two records. Although the power of their live concerts maintained their reputation as one of the most exciting groups ever seen,[citation needed] the music recorded for the Blue Note sessions was at first deemed "smoother" than on their European recordings, and took time to achieve the same high reputation.
After the death of Dannie Richmond the quartet fulfilled their remaining contracted engagements with drummer Lewis Nash and then disbanded in mid-1988. Their music, usually original compositions by Pullen, Adams and Richmond, had ranged from blues, through ballads, to post-bop and avant-garde. The ability of the players to encompass all these areas, often within one composition, removed any sameness or sterility from the quartet format. Except for the early recordings on the vanished Horo label, their European recordings on Soulnote and Timeless remained frequently available, unlike those made for Blue Note.
During the life of the Quartet, Pullen also made a duo recording with George Adams, Melodic Excursions (1982), and made three recordings under his own name, two further solo albums, the acclaimed Evidence Of Things Unseen (1983) and Plays Monk (1984), then with a quintet, another highly praised recording The Sixth Sense (1985) on Black Saint. He also recorded with (alphabetically) Hamiet Bluiett; Roy Brooks, the drummer who introduced him to Mingus; Jane Bunnett; Kip Hanrahan; Beaver Harris; Marcello Melis; and David Murray.
All Pullen's future recordings under his own name were for Blue Note. On 16 December 1988 he went into the studio with Gary Peacock (bass) and Tony Williams (drums) to make his first trio album New Beginnings, which astonished even those familiar with his work and became widely regarded as one of the finest trio albums ever recorded. He followed this in 1990 with another trio album, Random Thoughts, in somewhat lighter mood, this time with James Genus (bass) and Lewis Nash (drums).[9]
African Brazilian connection and late career (1990 to 1995)
In late 1990 Pullen added a new element to his playing and his music with the formation of his African Brazilian Connection ("ABC"). This featured Carlos Ward (alto sax), Nilson Matta (bass), Guilherme Franco and Mor Thiam (percussion) in a group which mixed African and Latin rhythms with jazz. Their first album, Kele Mou Bana, was released in 1991. Their second, but very different, album of 1993, Ode To Life, was a tribute to George Adams, who had died on November 14, 1992,[citation needed]containing Pullen's heartfelt and moving composition in Adams' memory, "Ah George We Hardly Knew Ya". A third album, Live...Again, recorded in July 1993 at the Montreux Jazz Festival, was not released until 1995. This featured "Ah George..." and other songs from their previous albums, in somewhat extended versions. Pullen achieved more popular and commercial success with this group than with any other. In 1993 Ode To Life was fifth on the U.S. Billboard Top Jazz Album chart.
During the last few years of his life, Pullen toured with his trio, with his African Brazilian Connection, and as a solo artist, but did not release any more solo records. As a sideman and session musician, he left his mark with a variety of noteworthy artists, including (alphabetically) Jane Bunnett (notably their duo album New York Duets), Bill Cosby, Kip Hanrahan, David Murray's 1991 Shakill's Warrior, Maceo Parker, Ivo Perelman and Jack Walrath. He also toured and recorded with the group Roots from its inception.
Pullen's final project was a work combining the sounds of his African Brazilian Connection (extended by Joseph Bowie on trombone) with a choir and drums of Native Americans. Despite his Native American background (his paternal grandmother was half-Indian, probably Cherokee) he began to experiment with American Indian music as late as July 1992.[10] In 1994 Pullen was diagnosed with lymphoma. He continued to put great physical effort into completing the composition. In early March 1995 he played on his final recording, Sacred Common Ground (with the Chief Cliff Singers, Kootenai Indians from Elmo, Montana), a few weeks away from his death, returning to his heritage of the blues and the church. Unable to play at the live premiere, his place at the piano was taken by D.D. Jackson, with whom Pullen discussed the music from his hospital bed shortly before his death. He died on April 22, 1995 of lymphoma.
Pullen composed many pieces, which often were portraits or memories of people he knew. All were published by his own company, Andredon, but because he for a long time suffered from neglect musically, so did many of his compositions. His best known are the humorous "Big Alice" (for an imaginary fan), "Double Arc Jake" (for his son Jake and Rahsaan Roland Kirk), the passionate "Ode To Life" (for a friend), and the aforementioned lament, "Ah George We Hardly Knew Ya". Occasionally he wrote pieces with a religious feeling, such as "Gratitude" and "Healing Force", or to highlight the plight of African-Americans, such as "Warriors", "Silence = Death", and "Endangered Species: African American Youth". Following the assassination of African-American activist Malcolm X, Pullen had written a suite dedicated to Malcolm X's memory, but this required more instrumental resources than a normal-sized jazz group provides, and only the piano parts of this were ever recorded. Except for the Plays Monk album, Pullen almost exclusively featured his own compositions on his own recordings, until his time with the African Brazilian Connection. His compositions are well represented on the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet recordings, but his compositions which were recorded by others were usually performed by those who had known and worked with him.
Pullen's piano technique can be seen on the DVDs Mingus At Montreux 1975 and Roots Salutes The Saxophones.[11]
Posthumous tributes
Several musicians wrote songs as personal tributes to Pullen's memory. David Murray and D. D. Jackson recorded an album, Long Goodbye: A Tribute to Don Pullen (1998), dedicated to Pullen and featuring his compositions. Others who wrote tributes include Jane Bunnett, Cameron Brown and Myra Melford. D.D. Jackson also dedicated a piece to him on his CD, Paired Down, Vol. I (Justin Time Records, 1996), entitled "For Don".[12]
In 2005, Mosaic Records issued a set of four long-unavailable Blue Note recordings: Breakthrough and Song Everlasting by the Don Pullen/George Adams Quartet, and New Beginning and Random Thoughts by Pullen's own trio. Also, his songs hit big screen movies , "Big Alice" in " The Preacher's Wife" and "Once Upon A Time" in "Once Upon A Time When We Were Colored".
As the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet
- All That Funk (Palcoscenico, 1979)
- More Funk (Palcoscenico, 1979)
- Don't Lose Control (Soul Note, 1979)
- Earth Beams (Timeless, 1980)
- Life Line (Timeless, 1981)
- Melodic Excursions (Timeless, 1982)
- City Gates (Timeless, 1983)
- Live at the Village Vanguard (Soul Note, 1983)
- Live at the Village Vanguard Vol. 2 (Soul Note, 1983)
- Decisions (Timeless, 1984)
- Live at Montmartre (Timeless, 1985)
- Breakthrough (Blue Note, 1986)
- Song Everlasting (Blue Note, 1987)
- Paradise space shuttle (Timeless, 1989) (Recorded in 1979)
- Decisions (Timeless, 1990) (Recorded in 1984)
As sideman
With George Adams
- Suite for Swingers (1975)
- George Adams (1975)
- Live at Montmartre (1985)
- Fundamental Destiny, recorded 1991 (AECO, 2007)
- Resolution (Black Saint, 1977)
- Orchestra, Duo and Septet (1977)
- SOS (Im/possible to kept) (1979)
- Live at Carlos I (1986)
- Live at Carlos I: Another Night (1986)
- Duet in Detroit (Enja, 1987 [1993])
- In Dew Time (1989)
- New York Duets (1989)
- Live at Sweet Basil (1992)
- A Well-Kept Secret (1980)
- Negcaumongus (1980)
- Enchance (Horizon, 1977)
- The Giuseppi Logan Quartet (ESP, 1965)
- More Giuseppi Logan (ESP, 1965)
- Alternate Spaces (India Navigation, 1979)
- Free to Dance (Black Saint, 1978)
- Angedras' (Black Saint, 1982)
- Mingus Moves (Atlantic, 1973)
- Mingus at Carnegie Hall (Atlantic, 1974)
- Changes One (Atlantic, 1974)
- Changes Two (Atlantic, 1974)
- Chair in the Sky (1979)
- Penthouse Jazz (Volume 1) (1977)
- Holy Siege on Intrigue (Volume 2) (1977)
- Flowers for Albert (1977)
- Children (Black Saint, 1985)
- Shakill's Warrior (DIW, 1991)
- Shakill's II (DIW, 1993)
- Apples Cores (1977)
- Roots Revisited (Minor Music, 1990)
- Children of Ibeji (1992)
- Dannie Richmond (1975)
- Enhance (1977)
- Black Africa (1977)
- Salutes the Saxophone (1991)
- Stablemates (1992)
- Live 3 Ways (1990)
- Serious Hang (Muse, 1992)
- Charles Williams (Mainstream, 1971)
- Trees and Grass and Things (Mainstream, 1971)
- Stickball (Mainstream, 1972)
References
- Interview with Vernon Frazer, Coda, October, 1976 (Canada); Free Blues, Jazz Hot 331, October 1976 (France); Piano Inside And Out, Down Beat, June 1985 (USA); Don Pullen, Down Beat, November 1989 (USA).
- Wilmer, Val (1977). As Serious as your Life. Quartet. p. 94. ISBN 0-7043-3164-0.
- Litweiler, John (1984). The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958. Da Capo. p. 228. ISBN 0-306-80377-1.
- Don Pullen, Jazz Magazine, September 1980 (France).
- Don Pullen Blindfold Test, Down Beat, November 1989 (USA); Don Pullen Obituary, Jazz Journal, July 1995 (UK); Modern Jazz 1945-70 (UK).
- Brian Priestley, Mingus: A Critical Biography, London: Palladin, 1985, ISBN 0-586-08478-9; Don Pullen, Keyboard, September 1982 (Canada).
- Don Pullen, Down Beat, July 1977 (USA); Jane Bunnett Blindfold Test, Jazz Times, 2002; Don Pullen, Jazz Journal, June 1980 (UK).
- Don Pullen, Keyboard, September 1982 (Canada); Don Pullen, Musician, October 1986 (USA); Cameron Brown Interview (Internet).
- Don Pullen, Down Beat, November 1989 (USA).
- Liner notes to Sacred Common Ground (1995)
- Don Pullen, Musician, October 1986 (USA); Don Pullen, Down Beat, November 1989 (USA).
External links
- Bond, Mike. "Don Pullen". Retrieved 2006-05-14.
- [Don Pullen - Ode to life http://jeanlouis.chrisment.perso.sfr.fr/DonPullen/]
THE
MUSIC OF DON PULLEN: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH DON PULLEN:
Don Pullen: video clips on YouTube
Don Pullen – Solo Piano Album (Extended Album)
Newcomer, part 1
George Adams-Flute; Don Pullen-Piano; Cameron Brown-Bass; Danny Richmond-Drums
Newcomer, part 2
Intentions
Seriously Speaking
Flowers For A Lady
Charles Mingus (b)
George Adams (ts,voc on 3.)
Hamiet Bluiett (bs)
Don Pullen (p)
Dannie Richmond (dr)
George Adams (ts,voc on 3.)
Hamiet Bluiett (bs)
Don Pullen (p)
Dannie Richmond (dr)
July 28, 1974
Todi (Italy)
RAI television broadcast
RAI television broadcast
