Purnell Steen, a titan of Denver music who was also a leader in the civil rights movement, has died at 84.

Steen attended Denver’s East High School and CU Boulder. He still played regularly with the Five Points Ambassadors band and also performed as Purnell Steen and LeJazz Machine.

Steen’s is the second major death in Denver’s music scene and Black community this year. His cousin, Charlie Burrell, died in June at age 104.

Steen started playing piano when he was just a few years old.

The son of a Pullman porter and a caterer, Steen told KGNU his mother asked the organist at Zion Baptist Church, the oldest African-American Church in the Rocky Mountain region, to start him on the piano.

Steen was also inspired by his cousin Burrell. When Steen was 8, he watched as Burrell desegregated t

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