Don Pullen discusses how he started in jazz

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Don Pullen discusses his leaving North Carolina for New York

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Don Pullen discusses what he learned from his time with Charles Mingus

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Transcription

Q: “How did you get into jazz if you didn’t play it really until you were nineteen or twenty, and was it in Virginia that you played jazz?”

A: Don Pullen: “No, I don't think it was.”

Interviewer: “No?”

Don Pullen: “No. I had a cousin who was a pianist, jazz pianist. His name was Clyde "Fats" Wright and he came by. He had been on the road. I think he worked with Dinah Washington. He'd been to New York and had established himself, I guess, as a pianist. He was a tremendous piano player out of the Tatum school more or less. And I used to listen to him and he would take a lot of time with me and tell me how the scene was in New York and in fact, I was actually prepared for just about everything that has happened in my life through conversations with him. You know, he was very ... him being a relative, he told me so many things about the life and the music.”