A Love Supreme

Elvin Jones (pictured in 1976)

A Love Supreme is a suite with 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.[1] Coltrane's home in Dix Hills, Long Island, may have inspired the album.[1] Another influence may have been Ahmadiyya Islam.[2]

The album begins with the bang of a gong (tam-tam) and cymbal washes. 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 titular vocal chant "A Love Supreme", sung by Coltrane accompanying himself through overdubs nineteen times.[3]

In the fourth and final movement, "Psalm", Coltrane performs what he calls a "musical narration". Lewis Porter calls it a "wordless recitation".[4] 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.[5] The poem (and, in his own way, Coltrane's solo) ends with the cry, "Elation. Elegance. Exaltation. All from God. Thank you God. Amen."[6]

A Love Supreme was categorized by Rockdelux as modal jazz, avant-garde jazz, free jazz, hard bop, and post-bop.[7]

An alternative version of "Acknowledgement" was recorded the next day on December 10 with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp and 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. The only live recording of the "Love Supreme" suite is from 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.[8] A further iteration with yet more studio breakdowns and overdubs was issued as a three-disc complete masters edition released by Impulse! on November 20, 2015.[9]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
All About Jazz	[10]
AllMusic	[11]
Down Beat	[12]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[13]
MusicHound Jazz	5/5[14]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz	[15]
Q	[16]
Robert Christgau	A–[17]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[18]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide	[19]

Released in January 1965 by Impulse! Records,[20] A Love Supreme became one of the most acclaimed jazz records,[21] and contemporary critics hailed it as one of the important albums of post-war jazz.[22] It has since been regarded as Coltrane's masterpiece,[23] and by 1970 it had sold about 500,000 copies, far exceeding Coltrane's usual sales of 30,000.[24]

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.[25] According to music professor Ingrid Monson of Harvard University, the album was an exemplary recording of modal jazz.[26] 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".[27] Rolling Stone called it a "legendary album-long hymn of praise" and stated, "the indelible four-note theme of the first movement, 'Acknowledgement,' is the humble foundation of the suite. But Coltrane's majestic, often violent blowing (famously described as 'sheets of sound') is never self-aggrandizing. Aloft with his classic quartet...Coltrane soars with nothing but gratitude and joy. You can't help but go with him."[28]

According to Acclaimed Music, A Love Supreme is the 61st most frequently ranked record on critics' favorite lists.[29] In 2003, it was ranked number 47 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time;[28] maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list.[30] NME ranked it number 188 on a similar list ten years later.[31] The manuscript for the album was included in the National Museum of American History's "Treasures of American History" collection at the Smithsonian Institution.[32] In 2016, the album was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry due to its "cultural, historic, or artistic significance."[33] It is Coltrane's second album to be included after Giant Steps in 2005.[34] It was included in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[35] It was voted number 85 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).[36]

According to Joachim-Ernst Berendt, the album's hymn-like quality permeated modern jazz and rock music.[37] Musicians such as Joshua Redman[38] and U2,[39] who mention the album in their song "Angel of Harlem",[40] have mentioned the influence of the album on their own work. Guitarists John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana called the album one of their biggest early influences and recorded Love Devotion Surrender in 1973 as a tribute.[41] "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."[42]

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". Jazz critic Martin Gayford later elucidated Davis' comments: If a listener is "in the mood", he wrote, "it's majestic and compelling; if you're not, it's interminable and pretentious." In Gayford's own appraisal for The Daily Telegraph, he argued that it "marked the point at which jazz—for good or ill—ceased for a while to be hip and cool, becoming instead mystical and messianic".[23]

All tracks composed by John Coltrane and published by Jowcol Music (BMI)

• 1965 in jazz
• "Angel of Harlem" – a 1989 U2 song referencing the album
• A Love Surreal – an album by Bilal
• Blue World, an album recorded between Crescent and A Love Supreme released in 2019
• Concept album
• Love of God

• Kahn, Ashley (2003). A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album. Elvin Jones. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-200352-2.
• Porter, Lewis (1999). John Coltrane: His Life and Music. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-08643-X.
• Porter, Lewis (1985). "John Coltrane's A Love Supreme: Jazz Improvisation as Composition" (PDF). Journal of the American Musicological Society. University of California Press. 38 (3): 593–621. doi:10.1525/jams.1985.38.3.03a00060.

• Whyton, Tony (2013) Beyond A Love Supreme: John Coltrane and the Legacy of an Album. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199733236

• A Love Supreme at Discogs (list of releases)
• A Love Supreme – a list of accolades at Acclaimed Music