A Love Supreme

A Love Supreme is an album by the jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane. He recorded it in one session on December 9, 1964, at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, leading a quartet featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.

A Love Supreme was released by Impulse! Records in January 1965. Referred to as the saxophonist's "definitive tone poem," it ranks among Coltrane's best-selling albums and is widely considered one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of jazz and one of the greatest albums ever made.

Composition

A Love Supreme is a through-composed suite in 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. The album’s improvisational and spiritual intensity has led some to liken it to glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, as it conveys a profound sense of ecstatic devotion. This sacred quality has led it to become the “central text” of the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco. Coltrane's home in Dix Hills, Long Island, may have inspired the album. Another influence may have been Ahmadiyya Islam.

According to assistant music editor at Time Out John Lewis, the album "pulls off the rare trick of being utterly uncompromising yet completely accessible."

The album begins with the bang of a gong (tam-tam) and cymbal washes on the first track, "Acknowledgement". 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 vocal chant "a love supreme", sung by Coltrane accompanying himself through overdubs nineteen times. According to Rolling Stone, this movement's four-note theme is "the humble foundation of the suite".

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

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