A Love Supreme is a through-composed[2]suite[3] in four parts: "Acknowledgement" (which includes the oral chant that gives the album its name), "Resolution", "Pursuance", and "Psalm". Coltrane plays tenor saxophone on all parts. One critic has written that the album was intended to represent a struggle for purity, an expression of gratitude, and an acknowledgement that the musician's talent comes from a higher power.[4] The album’s improvisational and spiritual intensity has led some to liken it to glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, as it conveys a profound sense of ecstatic devotion.[5] This sacred quality has led it to become the “central text” of the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco.[6]Coltrane's home in Dix Hills, Long Island, may have inspired the album.[4] Another influence may have been Ahmadiyya Islam.[7]
The album begins with the bang of a gong (tam-tam) and cymbal washes on the first track, "Acknowledgement". Jimmy Garrison enters on double bass with the four-note motif that lays the foundation of the movement. Coltrane begins a solo. He plays variations on the motif until he repeats the four notes thirty-six times. The motif then becomes the vocal chant "a love supreme", sung by Coltrane accompanying himself through overdubs nineteen times.[8] According to Rolling Stone, this movement's four-note theme is "the humble foundation of the suite".[9]
In the fourth and final movement, "Psalm", Coltrane performs what he calls a "musical narration". Lewis Porter calls it a "wordless recitation".[10] The devotional is included in the liner notes. Coltrane "plays" the words of the poem on saxophone but doesn't speak them. Some scholars have suggested that this performance is an homage to the sermons of African-American preachers.[11] The poem (and, in his own way, Coltrane's solo) ends with the cry, "Elation. Elegance. Exaltation. All from God. Thank you God. Amen."[12]
An alternative version of "Acknowledgement" was recorded the next day on December 10 with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp and a second bassist, Art Davis. This version omitted Coltrane chanting "a love supreme"; he preferred the quartet version with the chant, placing that on the issued album. There are two known live recordings of the "Love Supreme" suite. For years the only known live recording of the "Love Supreme" suite was of a performance at the Festival Mondial du Jazz Antibes in Juan-les-Pins, France, on July 26, 1965. On October 29, 2002, the album was reissued as a remastered deluxe edition by Impulse! Records with this live performance and the alternate takes on a bonus disc.[14] A further iteration with more studio breakdowns and overdubs was issued as a three-disc complete masters edition released by Impulse! on November 20, 2015.[15] The other known live recording of the suite was recorded October 2, 1965, at The Penthouse in Seattle. The set was recorded by saxophonist Joe Brazil. This live performance was released on October 22, 2021, by Impulse! as A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle.[16]
Released in January 1965 by Impulse! Records,[19]A Love Supreme became one of the most acclaimed jazz records,[20] and contemporary critics hailed it as one of the important albums of post-war jazz.[21] By 1970, it had sold about 500,000 copies, far exceeding Coltrane's usual sales of 30,000,[22] although it never charted on the Billboard 200.[2] It has since been regarded as Coltrane's masterpiece[23] and is "without question Coltrane's most beloved album", according to Robert Christgau, who adds that it "cemented 'Trane's divine status in Japan".[2]
A Love Supreme was widely recognized as a work of deep spirituality and analyzed with religious subtext, although cultural studies scholars Richard W. Santana and Gregory Erickson argued that the "avant-garde jazz suite" could be interpreted otherwise.[33] According to music professor Ingrid Monson of Harvard University, the album was an exemplary recording of modal jazz.[34] Nick Dedina wrote on the Rhapsody web site that the music ranged from free jazz and hard bop to sui generis gospel music in "an epic aural poem to man's place in God's plan".[35] Calling it a "legendary album-long hymn of praise", Rolling Stone said that "Coltrane's majestic, often violent blowing (famously described as 'sheets of sound') is never self-aggrandizing" and that he is "aloft with his classic quartet", "soar[ing] with nothing but gratitude and joy" on a compelling journey for listeners.[9]The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide (1985) said that "each man performs with eloquence and economy", while calling the album "the masterpiece from the quartet's studio work", "the first comprehensive statement of Coltrane's spiritual concerns", and "the cornerstone of many Coltrane collections".[36] On the other hand, jazz critic Tom Hull said that he has not much considered the album "spiritual" but rather "the most perfectly plotted single piece of jazz ever recorded".[32]
Carlos Santana (1978), one of many rock musicians to have been deeply influenced by the album
According to Joachim-Ernst Berendt, the album's hymn-like quality permeated modern jazz and rock music.[45] As Christgau explains, the record was "adored by American hippies from the Byrds and Carlos Santana on down, and served as theme music to Lester Bangs's wake at CBGB".[2] Musicians such as Joshua Redman[46] and U2,[47] who mention the album in their song "Angel of Harlem",[48] have mentioned the influence of the album on their own work. Both Santana and fellow guitarist John McLaughlin have called the album one of their biggest early influences and recorded Love Devotion Surrender in 1973 as a tribute.[49] "Every so often this ceases to be a jazz record and is more avant-garde contemporary classical," said Neil Hannon of the band The Divine Comedy. "I love the combination of abstract piano that's all sort of 'clang', and weird chords with wailing saxophone over the top."[50]
In The Penguin Guide to Jazz, Richard Cook and Brian Morton gave A Love Supreme a rare "crown" rating but asked whether it was "the greatest jazz album of the modern period..or the most overrated?" Miles Davis, Coltrane's former bandleader, said the record "reached out and influenced those people who were into peace. Hippies and people like that".
Christgau, writing in 2020, said, "it's meditative rather than freewheeling, with each member of his classic quartet instructed to embark on his own harmonically mapped excursion and the title set to a chanted four-note melody you could hum in your sleep. I'm on my fourth consecutive play with no signs of tune fatigue as I write, plus my wife loves it. All true, all remarkable. But how much you value it, I expect, depends on how much faith you place in your own spirituality." He concluded that the next time he will listen to the album "may well depend on who dies when".[2]
Track listing
All tracks composed by John Coltrane and published by Jowcol Music (BMI)
^Rowlands, Jonathan (March 20, 2019). "John Coltrane's A Love Supreme as Prayed Glossolalia: A Suggestion". Journal of Pentecostal Theology. 28 (1): |page=84–102 – via Academic Search Premier.
^ abHull, Tom (April 13, 2020). "Music Week". Tom Hull – on the Web. Retrieved July 17, 2020.
^Santana, Richard W.; Erickson, Gregory (2008). Religion and Popular Culture: Rescripting the Sacred. McFarland & Company. pp. 78–81. ISBN978-0786435531.
^Monson, Ingrid (2008). "Jazz: From Birth to the 1970s". In Koskoff, Ellen (ed.). The Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Routledge. p. 359. ISBN978-0415994033.
