George Adams Don Pullen Quartet - Live at Village Vanguard

I have been fascinated with Don Pullen lately. Don was a highly underrated pianist/organist, comfortable playing the funkiest blues or in completely free chaos. A presumptive equation would be Monk + Cecil Taylor = Don Pullen, but that doesn't completely cover all that is Don Pullen. Don Pullen co-leads this album with Tenor Saxophonist and long time Pullen collaborator George Adams. The other two outstanding musicians are Dannie Richmond (long time Mingus workshop drummer), and Cameron Brown on Bass. I haven't heard of Cameron Brown before, but he gives a great performance on this album.
The first track on side one is called "The Necessary Blues (Thank You Very Much, Mr. Monk)." The head of the song has me thinking, "I can't believe it's not Monk!" The bluesy, straight 16th notes come right out of the Monk playbook. The group also performs Ellington and Mingus on this album.
In trying to spread the word on Don Pullen, I have realized he didn't record a lot of standards, but I think this album may be the closest, in which the group performs "Solitude" and "Diane" by Ellington and Mingus respectively. Don played a lot of original music, as well as music written by his peers.
This jazz is very in and very out, which is at the heart of all of my favorites. I recommend this one to everyone. It's a Soul Note record; I'm always trying to pick up records on the Black Saint/Soul Note (they are sister labels).

This picture isn't from the LP. This is George Adams playing his heart out, which is how he always played:

And Don Pullen used a technique in which he curled his fingers to glide his right hand up and down the keyboard to make magical glissandi. Whenever he did this he always kept track of the form, and he incorporated this technique in the middle of very lyrical solos. I'm not sure if piano technicians were wild about it. He was so dedicated to this technique, I believe I've read somewhere that his knuckles would typically be bleeding at the end of gigs.