A Love Supreme Turns 60
Celebrating The Divine
I nearly missed the 60th anniversary last week of the release of one of the greatest (maybe the greatest) albums ever recorded, A Love Supreme by John Coltrane.
A seminal album both in terms of my understanding of jazz music, but also a reminder - as powerful today as then - that art and music can be transcendent.
The album, less than 33 minutes long, is a gift, a masterwork that doesn’t even seem to be something a human could create. Each of the musicians on every song appear to be playing something different, each reaching higher and higher. The music is… how can I say this without veering into mumbo-jumbo… the music is Divine.
According to Coltrane’s wife, Alice, in the summer of 1964, John went up into a guest bedroom and didn’t re-emerge for five days. When he came down the stairs, Alice recalled a tranquility in his face. “This is the first time that I have received all the music for what I want to record,” he said to her.
Received. The music was given to him. I believe him. If you have a half hour to spare, and you haven’t heard A Love Supreme, please put aside the time and listen. Not as background music. Don’t do anything as you listen. Give yourself over the Coltrane for 33 minutes. Here’s the YouTube full album:
In particular, the moment that won me over arrives at the six minute mark. It would be the first time Coltrane’s voice would be heard on one of his records. He doesn’t sing, he doesn’t speak. He chants and it’s mesmerizing.
The final moments of the final song - a devotional - overwhelms me and leaves me breathless every single time.
I’m not technically proficient in jazz, nor am I a jazz historian so if you’d like a wonderful read on the history of the album and its impact, here’s an essay by music and culture historian Ted Gioia:
Anyway, I write a lot in these humble pages about art moving you beyond yourself, sometimes into uncomfortable places, sometimes backward in time into nostalgia, sometimes in order to impress you with skill and mastery.
Coltrane’s A Love Supreme is not that. This is sacred. Coltrane received it, and then gave it to us. Thank God.
After years looking I finally found something similar in cd form. Duke Ellington's Seattle Concert 1952. The trumpet/sax solos on there are the best I've ever heard. Duke's drummer at the time was Louis Bellson, the originator of the double bass drum. Sometime listen to "Skin Deep", written by Bellson with a solo that's hard to beat even today.