A Love Supreme
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| A Love Supreme | ||
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| Studio album by John Coltrane | ||
| Released | 1965 | |
| Recorded | December 9, 1964 | |
| Genre | Jazz | |
| Length | 33:02 | |
| Label | Impulse! | |
| Producer(s) | Bob Thiele | |
| Professional reviews | ||
|---|---|---|
| John Coltrane chronology | ||
| Crescent (1964) |
A Love Supreme (1965) |
The John Coltrane Quartet Plays (1965) |
A Love Supreme is a jazz album recorded by John Coltrane's quartet on December 9, 1964 at the Van Gelder studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The album is a four-part suite, broken up into tracks called "Acknowledgement" (which contains the famous mantra that gave the suite its name), "Resolution," "Pursuance," and "Psalm." It is intended to be a spiritual album, broadly representative of a personal struggle for purity. The final track, "Psalm," uniquely corresponds to the wording of a devotional poem Coltrane included in the liner notes.
An alternative version of "Acknowledgement" was recorded the next day on December 10. This version included tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp and bassist Art Davis. The sole live performance of the "Love Supreme" suite from a 1965 performance in Antibes, France, was also remastered and released in a 2002 2-CD set by Impulse! Records with the original album and additional outtakes.
A Love Supreme is usually listed among the greatest jazz albums of all time. It was ranked eighty-second in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time.[1]. The album was also ranked forty-seventh on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and is commonly within the top five of Rate Your Music's top 100 albums of all time. The elements of harmonic freedom heard on this album indicated the changes to come in Coltrane's music.
Will Downing released an R&B cover version of the main theme, with the co-operation of John's widow Alice Coltrane, which reached number fourteen in the UK singles chart in 1988.
The suite also forms four tracks on the 2002 Branford Marsalis Quartet album entitled Footsteps of our Fathers.
Contents |
[edit] Track listing
- "Part 1: Acknowledgement" – 7:47
- "Part 2: Resolution" – 7:22
- "Part 3: Pursuance" – 10:45
- "Part 4: Psalm" – 7:08
[edit] Personnel
- John Coltrane – tenor saxophone, leader
- McCoy Tyner – piano
- Jimmy Garrison – bass
- Elvin Jones – drums
[edit] See also
- The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
- Variations on A Love Supreme.
- Man in the Air – album by jazz vocalist Kurt Elling which adds lyrics to "Resolution."
- Love Devotion Surrender – album by Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin containing a jazz-rock tribute to the suite.
[edit] Further reading
- Ashley Kahn A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album, foreword by Elvin Jones, 2002 for the first edition, Viking Penguin, USA, ISBN 0-670-03136-4
