50 years ago in February, 1965, John Coltrane released A Love Supreme. One of the greatest albums in any genre, the record represented the culmination of Coltrane’s spiritual rebirth after recovering from heroin addiction nearly 10 years earlier. Coltrane pledged his horn to god during his struggles and Supreme is the sound of a man who was good to his word. Here’s a remembrance from The Economist…
…“Supreme” manages to combine the technical mastery and intellectualism of mid-1960s Coltrane, but is reasonably easy listening.
“Supreme” is also Coltrane’s most spiritual album. And for this reason it gives some insight into a person that no one, not even the most devoted jazz fans, feels that they really know. He died young. He practised furiously, it is said for up to 12 hours a day, becoming perhaps the most technically accomplished saxophone player ever…
While recovering from heroin addiction in the late 1950s, Coltrane became deeply religious, and “Supreme” has explicitly spiritual overtones. In the liner notes, he calls the work a “humble offering to Him”. In the first movement, “Acknowledgment”, Coltrane chants the words “A Love Supreme” in a gospel-like manner. (Some people reckon that he is actually saying “Allah Supreme”—a claim that even serious jazz scholars do not see as totally implausible.)
…Lastly, “Supreme” is important because of the context in which was released. Coltrane was dead a few months afterwards. No saxophonist has since earned the same level of popular and critical acclaim. Around the time that “Supreme” came out, jazz’s popularity started to plunge…
In that sense, widespread reverence for “Supreme” is partially explained by what it now signifies. It was the last album of what most people would consider “proper” jazz to have had popular appeal. It was a final salvo of an art form that was dying, and which has never really recovered.
Here’s a documentary that came out a decade ago to celebrate the album’s 40th anniversary…
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