Judi Pulver, the singer, songwriter and keyboardist who had a second, four-decade career as a music sales executive with The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, has died. She was 77.
Pulver died Tuesday morning at a rehabilitation facility in Santa Monica after a battle with lung cancer, her husband, composer and guitarist Don Peake, told THR.
Pulver’s 1973 album, Pulver Rising, was released by MGM Records and featured the single “Dancing on the Moon,” which she performed on television the following year and as the opening act on a Mott the Hoople tour.
The Connecticut native moved into sales and marketing when she created the music advertising business at THR in 1980. “She told them, ‘I believe I can sell music ads because I’m an artist,’” Peake noted. “They said, ‘Go and sit over there and see what you can do.’” She would spend 27 years at THR, launching its film and TV music editorial franchise and leading the newspaper’s two-day conference sponsored each year by music rights organizations ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.
She moved to Variety in 2007 and worked there until her retirement in 2022.
Pulver and Peake first met when he came to THR to inquire about an ad for The People Under the Stairs, the 1991 film from Wes Craven that he composed music for. They reconnected and were married in 2017.
Survivors also include her sister, Suzie.
