The Golden Anniversary of John Coltrane’s Hymn of Praise
John Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme 50 years ago today. Coltrane’s suite was a wholly original work motivated by a spiritual awakening that brought him to a new level of consciousness when he was in his early 30’s. It was sufficient to help him stop using drugs and alcohol in May 1957 after he’d been fired by Miles Davis. (Clean and sober, he went on to work with Thelonious Monk for the next six months before returning to Miles in 1958.) Notwithstanding what Trane called a “phase which was contradictory to the pledge and away from the esteemed path,” his experience of “the grace of God” inspired a sustained period of creativity that lasted until his death from liver cancer in 1967 at age 40. A decade earlier, he’d “humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.” Coltrane called his devotional work “a humble offering to Him. An attempt to say THANK YOU GOD.”
A Love Supreme is one of the most iconic recordings in modern music. It’s also one of the most popular jazz releases of all time, selling about 500,000 copies by 1970, millions since. While jazz encourages new interpretations of even its most personal works (“God Bless the Child,” “Strange Fruit,” “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” “Naima,” “Blood Count” ), Coltrane’s magnum opus is so personal an expression of spiritual belief and action that it defies recreation. Coltrane himself only performed the work once in concert. For this listener, interpretive recordings of the suite by Branford Marsalis, the Turtle Island String Quartet, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra border on the transgressive.
Dan Morgenstern, the jazz historian whom I wrote about here a few weeks ago, saw the John Coltrane Quartet at the Half Note in the mid-Sixties. Lewis Porter quotes this 1993 recollection by Morgenstern in his biography, John Coltrane: His Life and Music. “The intensity that was generated was absolutely unbelievable. I can still feel it, and it was unlike any other feeling within the music we call jazz…It carried you away. If you let yourself be carried by it, it was an absolutely ecstatic feeling.”
Ecstasy and serenity are both prominent in A Love Supreme, the former especially in the second and third movements, Resolution and Pursuance; the latter in the opening and closing movements, Acknowledgement and Psalm. Coltrane’s saxophone solo in Psalm follows the contours of his poem, A Love Supreme, which was published on the jacket of the Impulse! LP and subsequent CD reissues. Porter calls the solo a “wordless recitation, if you will, of the words of the poem…What’s even more amazing, his playing beautifully expresses the meaning of the words…Each section of several lines has an arched shape, an ascending phrase, a recitation on one tone, and a descending phrase. The recitation tones ascend as the piece builds in intensity. This is just the way black American preachers work…You can follow [with a few adjustments] his solo along with the poem, and you will find that he plays right to the final ‘Amen’.”
A Love Supreme
I will do all I can to be worthy of Thee O Lord.
It all has to do with it.
Thank you God.
Peace.
There is none other.
God is. It is so beautiful.
Thank you God. God is all.
Help us to resolve our fears and weaknesses.
Thank you God.
In You all things are possible.
We know. God made us so.
Keep your eye on God.
God is. He always was. He always will be.
No matter what…it is God.
He is gracious and merciful.
It is most important that I know Thee.
Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thoughts,
fears and emotions—time—all related …
all made from one … all made in one.
Blessed be His name.
Thought waves—heat waves—all vibrations—
all paths lead to God. Thank you God.
His way…it is so lovely…it is gracious.
It is merciful—Thank you God.
One thought can produce millions of vibrations
and they all go back to God … everything does.
Thank you God.
Have no fear…believe…Thank you God.
The universe has many wonders. God is all. His way…it is so wonderful.
Thoughts—deeds—vibrations, etc.
They all go back to God and He cleanses all.
He is gracious and merciful…Thank you God.
Glory to God…God is so alive.
God is.
God loves.
May I be acceptable in Thy sight.
We are all one in His grace.
The fact that we do exist is acknowledgement of
Thee O Lord.
Thank you God.
God will wash away all our tears…
He always has…
He always will.
Seek Him everyday. In all ways seek God everyday.
Let us sing all songs to God
To whom all praise is due…praise God.
No road is an easy one, but they all go back to God.
With all we share God.
It is all with God.
It is all with Thee.
Obey the Lord.
Blessed is He.
We are from one thing…the will of God…
Thank you God.
I have seen God—I have seen ungodly—none can
be greater—none can compare to God.
Thank you God.
He will remake us … He always has and He
always will.
It is true—blessed be His name—Thank you God.
God breathes through us so completely…so gently
we hardly feel it…yet, it is our everything.
Thank you God.
ELATION—ELEGANCE—EXALTATION
All from God.
Thank you God. Amen.
Coltrane composed A Love Supreme in the studio of his home in Dix Hills, Long Island, New York. In Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, Ben Ratliff writes, “Alice Coltrane has said that on one day in the late summer of 1964, he came downstairs in his new house ‘like Moses coming down from the mountain,’ holding the complete outline for a new suite…A manuscript showing this preliminary musical arrangement for A Love Supreme surfaced in late 2004, when Alice Coltrane offered it to Guernsey’s Auction House to be sold. [It’s now included in the Treasures of American History collection at the Smithsonian Institution.] The manuscript indicated, among other things, that Coltrane felt the piece could be arranged for a group of nine: tenor saxophone and ‘one other horn,’ piano, trap drums, two basses, two conga players, and one timbales player.”
A Love Supreme was recorded by the classic Coltrane Quartet on December 9, 1964, but the following day he made two sextet takes of Acknowledgement with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp and bassist Art Davis joining the quartet. Those takes, and the only concert performance of A Love Supreme, made in France on July 26, 1965, were included on Impulse’s Deluxe Edition reissue in 2002.
Here is a filmed excerpt of the concert performance of A Love Supreme.