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A Love Supreme [Vinyl]
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Price:
$15.98
$11.19*
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| Part No: | B000003N7F |
| Manufacturer: | Impulse Records |
| MFG Part: | |
| Customer Rating: | 5.0 / 5.0 |
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John Coltrane looks pretty serious on the cover of A Love Supreme, seriously genius. ©1964 MCA
A Love Supreme is a suite about redemption, a work of pure spirit and song, that encapsulates all the struggles and aspirations of the 1960s. Following hard on the heels of the lyrical, swinging Crescent, A Love Supreme heralded Coltrane's search for spiritual and musical freedom, as expressed through polyrhythms, modalities, and purely vertical forms that seemed strange to some jazz purists, but which captivated more adventurous listeners (and rock fellow travelers such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, and the Byrds), while initiating a series of volatile, unruly prayer offerings, including Kulu Su Mama, Ascension, Om, Meditations, Expression, Interstellar Space. From the urgent speech-like timbre of his tenor, to the serpentine textures and earthy groove of Elvin Jones's drumming, Coltrane's suite proceeds with escalating intensity, conveying a hard-fought wisdom and a beckoning serenity in the prayer-like drones of "Psalm," where Jones rolls and rumbles like thunder as Garrison and Tyner toll away suggestively--all the while Coltrane searches for that one climactic note worthy of the love he wants to share. --Chip Stern
| "It's Not For Me to Say ... | 2010-05-19 | 5 / 5 |
| ... you'll love it. It's not for me to say you'll care ...."
... for Coltrane's playing, that is, or post bebop jazz in general, for that matter. Or for me to say that you'll be comfortable with Coltrane's musical affirmation of his religious "recovery' from drugs and booze. His "love supreme" is not of the flesh in this music; he is seriously seeking transcendence through submission to the Love of God. Whether you'll hear Coltrane's awakened spirituality in the music, or simply some very fine lyrical jazz supported by superb piano-playing from McCoy Tyner, will probably depend on your own sense of transcendence.
It's that question of transcendence that interests me. I'm not sure how this will play out in evolutionary terms, but I have to wonder whether the "yearning for transcendence" isn't instinctual in Homo sapiens. Next to Fear and Loathing of Mortality -AKA death - the longing for 'just a little bit' of Transcendence must be the wellspring of all human religious beliefs. That must be why Religion has inspired such a huge amount of the world's great music. Of all the arts - in words, in paint, in stone - music seems to me to have the greatest potential for expressing transcendence of our paltry material existence, possibly because it's the least material in itself. Music exists only immaterially, only in the moment of hearing and in the memory of the hearer. Post-modernist critics now insist that the 'meaning' of a poem or a novel has to be negotiated between the writer and the reader, but the words are solid on the page where they will remain until the paper crumbles. Music is always negotiated between the composer and the "first listener", i.e. the performer. Even jazz improvisation is negotiated by ear; Coltrane's 4-part composition on "A Love Supreme" is after all not finally HIS, but rather a collaboration of four irrevocably individual human beings. At its peak, the negotiation can be ecstatic.
So. From Gregorian chant to Bach cantatas to Arvo Pärt or John Coltrane, Religion has always made great Music. Some of that amounts to the merely pragmatic question of patronage; churches have always been splendid performance spaces. I imagine also that the experience of a sense of transcendence through music made fervent believers of many great composers. John Coltrane professed that his religious awakening saved his life from the despair and contempt of his earlier music. The music was the man, whom Lenny Tristano called "all emotion, no feeling." Biographically speaking, Coltrane's "salvation" in life preceded any "salvation" after death that Christians expect. A lot of self-hating drug/booze abusers, many of them musical, have had their lives 'turned around' by "a Love supreme". More power to religion then! In the end, it's not for me to say .... |
| An American Classic | 2010-05-03 | 5 / 5 |
| John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" is a classic of American music in any genre. Recorded in 1965 on Impulse! the album features Coltrane's quartet consisting of Coltrane on tenor sax, Jimmy Garrison, double bass, Elvin jones, drums, and McCoy Tyner, piano. "A Love Supreme" is a highly-integrated, intense work of about 33 minutes in four parts titled Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance, and Psalm. In its emotional depth, musical complexity, and spirituality, "A Love Supreme" takes jazz to an extraordinary musical level.
This music has deservedly become iconic even for listeners who know little about jazz or Coltrane. In its passion and wildness, it is music that shows its 1960s origins while surmounting them. This is highly spiritual music which Coltrane created after overcoming a long drug addiction. The religious character of the piece is apparent on even a casual hearing, but there is nothing sectarian in the work. The music is both personal and universal.
The work ranges from the meditative to the searching to the ecstatic. There are long, intricate and complex solos by Coltrane throughout, most of which vary a four-note phrase stated at the opening of the music and then chanted at the end of the first part as a mantra to the words "A Love Supreme." The work uses the entire range of Coltrane's sax and more as he overblows and shrieks to suggest his spiritual quest. The work ends with a slow Psalm, with Coltrane moving to a mystical close. Each of the quartet members also have incandescent solos in the work, especially the percussion of Jones in the second and third parts, Tyner's piano in "Pursuance" and Garrison's long bass solo which opens "Psalm." The third and fourth parts of the work tend to run together without pause as I hear them although some listeners hear them as separate, discrete sections.
I listen to and review a good deal of American classical music on . It offers insights into the American experience that sometimes are overlooked. Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" is an inspiring masterpiece in a distinctly American art form. I loved revisiting "A Love Supreme" which stands easily with the best accomplishments of American art.
Robin Friedman |
| Jazz classic; for many (but not all), a great intro to Coltrane's music | 2010-01-30 | 5 / 5 |
| It's funny to me that John Coltrane's most popular album is also the one that was his first step toward the spiritual, intense free jazz of his final recordings. As you can see from these reviews, the detractors frequently focus on this - it's a lot further away from bebop and ballads than Blue Train, Giant Steps, My Favorite Things, the album with Johnny Hartman, or the recordings with Miles Davis. Coltrane and his quartet uses abstract harmonies and rhythms (though they would go a lot further in the next two and a half years); Coltrane's playing uses plenty of nonconventional devices - squawks, screams, growls - and strains past the tenor saxophone's normal range.
If this sounds too much for you, this is not the place to start with Coltrane's recordings. You're better off trying the recordings I mentioned above first. Maybe over time you'll grow to love those recordings enough to try this one. If you don't, that's cool. A potential primer for A Love Supreme is the album immediately preceding it, Crescent, which is similar stylistically but more accessible.
There are also lots of people for whom this would be a great introduction to jazz. If you listen to rock with plenty of long, instrumental passages - Santana, Cream, Zeppelin, Hendrix, Zappa, the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead, Yes, King Crimson, etc. - then this album will likely make a lot of sense to you. Many of these musicians were clearly influenced by Coltrane, and this album.
If you get this album and love it, you may be wondering where to go next. A newbie may want to check out other classic, popular jazz albums ( has plenty of recommendations) or the list of Coltrane recordings outlined above. Some may warm to this album's experimental edge and want to find out "where Coltrane went next" - you can jump into the deep end with Ascension, Meditations and Interstellar Space, or take a more cautious approach with The John Coltrane Quartet Plays and Transition.
Finally, there are several editions of this on the market. If you're a casual fan, I'd stick to the 1-disc version - it's more than enough. If you're pretty sure you're going to become a big Coltrane fan, I would consider the 2-CD version instead - it has the fantastic live version of A Love Supreme.
Whichever way you go, this album is a jazz classic - one of John Coltrane's best recordings and a personal favorite of mine. |
| ONE OF COLTRANE'S BEST LP'S EVER!! | 2010-01-10 | 5 / 5 |
| | Unbelieveable... Play this Lp in an enclosed room at full volume (as far as you can go) on a decent turntable set up with a tube amp. You will never experience music like this again. Coltrane repotedly wrote this album after seeing or having a vision of God and dedicated this lp to Him. Play the Lp 100 times and you will notice something different each and every time. |
| The tenor saxophone expressing on disc what one's soul sings | 2010-01-09 | 5 / 5 |
| A LOVE SUPREME is John Coltrane's great four-part suite, recorded in February 1965. The saxophonist performs on tenor with his long-running ensemble of pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones and continues in the hard bop genre and from their last recordings, but the harmonic freedom and luminous tones are something never heard before. It is one of the first major appearances of religious devotion in Coltrane's music, which was to last until the end of his career.
Coltrane had for nearly a decade been playing the saxophone in a highly virtuosic manner, filling his solos with 16th and 32nd notes. By the end of the first part of this suite, when the four-note theme is connected to the mantra "A Love Supreme" spoken by Coltrane (accompanied with his own voice overdubbed), then these flourishes take on an added significance. It's no surprise that Coltrane moved on to free jazz after this, because after pushing hard bop to these extremes, there would just be no other way to pursue greater expressivity. Few recordings hold within them pure religious devotion for those seeking emotional extremes and a delicious theoretical scheme and subtleties of performances for listeners who like to analyze. A LOVE SUPREME deserves to rank as one of the great jazz albums because it offers something for everyone.
Garrison, Tyner and Jones all get to solo here (in the third part, "Pursuance") but the endless gyrations of the saxophone are what really carry this album. Still, Jones' use of a gong helps give A LOVE SUPREME a mystical atmosphere like nothing else in the quartet's catalogue.
If you dig A LOVE SUPREME, don't be afraid to move further into the Coltrane catalogue. His next major suite Meditations shows him fully into free jazz, but it isn't as vast a leap as it's often made out to be. |
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