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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. 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. 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. Maybe over time you'll grow to love those recordings enough to try this one.
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 listen to rock with plenty of long, instrumental passages - Santana, Cream, Zeppelin, Hendrix, Zappa, the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead, Yes, King Crimson, etc. 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. If you're a casual fan, I'd stick to the 1-disc version - it's more than enough. A newbie may want to check out other classic, popular jazz albums (amazon has plenty of recommendations) or the list of Coltrane recordings outlined above. As you can see from these amazon 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.
- then this album will likely make a lot of sense to you. 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. You're better off trying the recordings I mentioned above first. If you don't, that's cool.
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. 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.
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. 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.
A LOVE SUPREME is John Coltrane's great four-part suite, recorded in February 1965. 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.
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. 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.
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.
Perhaps never in music has such archness been so verceral--not like a heart racing, or a burn, but water running over the hands, air across the skin.Listen. What works so very very well here is how Coltrane takes his tenor, walks out onto the patterns he set, and blows little lines. The monkey's were smart. They stayed a step back.Well, I, relunctantly, am walking right up to Love Supreme. ba-da-ba-Da. But it is still music.
How do I do this. This is after all, music. Coltrane took those blue notes, the little arpeggios that each of the four parts rest on, and absolutely nailed them down to tonics that were so basic, they packed the maximum emotion. Little prayers. They are little gestures, little Oms. Brillant music, inspired music, possibly channeled music. Where does a person considering himself a serious music guy and one who tries to write about his music start with Love Supreme. I keep thinking of Kubrick's 2001--the monkeys gathered around the monolith: they know they are seeing something massive, brilliant, never to be seen again.
The beauty of the simplicity that makes the reverance seem natural, effortless. If you notice, his playing is just a little more spare on Love Supreme--leaves a little more space. Love Supreme in that sense may not be blues as music, but blues as emotional essense.What goes on top is another thing. ba-da-ba-Da. Listen to Jimmy Garrison's bass that opens the first section, after Coltane's intro, and it is a four note blues line.
The minor blues, the almost casual playing Trane does. Right away, you'll get it. A-LOVE-SU-PRME.This is what makes it all work. Something that has taken on so much meaning, any objective analysis almost becomes impossible. These are not, for a change, sheets of sound.
Trane was a master musician, and if you want to hear his commanand of complcation, go to Giant Steps.But Love Supreme is a whole different matter, and the simplicity is part of the point. I guess I am not that bright.Ok, let's start with the music. An album.Basically, Love Supreme is blues--mutated blues, but blues, and reletively simple blues at that.
Sort of a match with "My Favorite Things": While that record toys with pop banality, ".Supreme" plays on the opposite edge of the groud, with spirituality and mysticism. There isn't much particularly lovely about the music. Not Coltrane's best. A meandering search for something more.
A Love Supreme is an essential album for anyone who likes to listen to music to listen too on the face of this planet. A Love Supreme is classic, beautiful, definitive, spiritual, timeless, and did I mention pure genius. Sadly though we never did get to hear Coltrane make more albums like this as he died of liver cancer at the age of 40 with plans of becoming a monk.
There are only four tracks, "Acknowledgement" ,"Reseloution", "Pursuance", and "Pslam". A Love Supreme was and still is pure genius and was a jazz album that was way ahead of its time and it still is ahead of its time, never has there been a jazz album realesed that has sounded remotely close to the pieces heard on this album. Coltrane's, "A Love Supreme", is more than a jazz album its a spiritual journey or as Coltrane had said, " A Love Supreme is a gift to God".
Also its influence has been widespread not just to the jazz community but also to rock muscians like, Carlos Santana, and Bono of U2. So what are you waiting for go out an pick up this album and blast this album and let it change your life. The album is only 32 minutes but is still a timeless classic that can be listened to over and over and over again and it still will captivate and influence you.
Being for its short length, "A Love Supreme", allows you to hear John Coltranes spiritual journey and lets you hear his gift to God.
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