They say Rome wasn’t built in a day.
But one of the most important albums in jazz was recorded in a single session on December 9, 1964, when John Coltrane and his Quartet cut A Love Supreme at Van Gelder Studio, in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
Though just 33 minutes in length, the LP — Coltrane’s second work for Impulse! Records, following 1964’s underrated Crescent — has transcended all aspects of space and time since it was released to the public 60 years ago, in January 1965. Crafted in the practice room of the home Coltrane (1926 – 1967) shared with his wife, Alice, and their three children, in Dix Hills, New York, A Love Supreme was the saxophonist’s message to the Lord — a paean to the artist’s spiritual awakening in 1957.
“At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music,” Trane wrote in the original liner notes to A Love Supreme. “I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD. As time and events moved on, a period of irresolution did prevail. I entered into a phase which was contradictory to the pledge and away from the esteemed path; but thankfully, now and again through the unerring and merciful hand of God, I do perceive and have been duly re-informed of His OMNIPOTENCE, and of our need for, and dependence on Him. At this time I would like to tell you that NO MATTER WHAT … IT IS WITH GOD. HE IS GRACIOUS AND MERCIFUL. HIS WAY IS IN LOVE, THROUGH WHICH WE ALL ARE. IT IS TRULY — A LOVE SUPREME — .”
A Love Supreme was a declaration of renewal from a man — clean and sober for eight years — who had stared death in the face after spending much of the ’50s chasing a debilitating heroin high before kicking it cold turkey. In its place, a tireless work ethic was invoked to perfect his signature style, called “sheets of sound” by DownBeat critic Ira Gitler, in 1958.
Working alongside his most famous group — McCoy Tyner on piano, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones — the album is what Trane called “a humble offering to Him. An attempt to say ‘THANK YOU GOD’ through our work, even as we do in our hearts and with our tongues.”
This was a world that Trane had essentially discovered, like a latter-day explorer of lost continents.
When you listen to A Love Supreme 60 years after its initial appearance on record store shelves, you can still feel every ounce of elation that emerges from Coltrane’s tenor sax, as he and his quartet oscillate between modal melodicism to scorched-earth sonic sermonizing across this four-part suite. This is music that can seemingly lift the listener off the ground (playing at a substantial volume adds to the elevating vibe), allowing the Holy Spirit to control your soul for its duration on the stereo.
To honor the 60th anniversary, we asked 26 sax players from all areas of the jazz multiverse to speak on how this landmark LP entered their consciousness, and how its energy continues to radiate upon us in the 2020s.
(For those looking to add to their A Love Supreme collection, a limited edition “diamond” clear vinyl pressing of the album will be available on February 7, through the Impulse! imprint.)
Miguel Zenón
I heard Coltrane’s A Love Supreme at some point in my late teens. I hadn’t heard a lot of jazz at that point of my life, so I could not really understand most of what I was listening to. One thing was very clear to me though, and it was the fact that there was a very deep spiritual commitment on display here, something that went way beyond notes and chords. As I learned more about music and more about John Coltrane’s life, I understood that this wasn’t by accident; that it was (and especially so at this point of his musical development) an integral part of his quescafét. When I think about John Coltrane I can think about many things: master saxophonist, incredible improviser and groundbreaking composer. But what really sticks with me is his capacity to transcend the musical idiom and invoke the spiritual realm. Spirituality can mean many things to different people and although there are many clues available to us, we can’t really say with complete assurance what it meant to Trane and how it informed his music-making process. But whatever it meant to him, it most definitely comes across in his music in a very powerful way, not just on A Love Supreme, but on most of his masterful works.
Jason Robinson
The heights of the cosmos, the depths of the sea. The vicissitudes of the human experience. In sound and intention. That’s what John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme signifies to me. Many years ago, I came to what should have already been the most apparent realization: music reveals the human experience. Committed to the tenor saxophone, that metal contraption of seemingly endless expressive potential, I had long marveled at the breathtaking athleticism and intellectual rigor of Coltrane’s earlier 1959 masterpiece Giant Steps. For many saxophonists, this earlier recording serves as the ultimate aim, a raison d’être of improvisational and technical skill. It did for me as well. But A Love Supreme is of another order, serving in part as a culmination of the exploratory openness of Coltrane’s music in the first few years of the tumultuous 1960s, after Giant Steps, while also marking a shift to what many of us call Coltrane’s “late period,” those firebrand recordings from 1965 to Coltrane’s untimely passing in 1967. A devotional suite in four parts, A Love Supreme begins with a tripartite melodic figure — the bassline and lyrics of “Acknowledgment” — and concludes with the regal and meditative openness of “Psalm.” I’m not sure what I imagined music-making to be before A Love Supreme illuminated the path for me, but now I know it reflects our hopes, fears, and dreams. We imagine the worlds we want to inhabit through our sound explorations. “Dear listener,” writes Coltrane in the liner notes to A Love Supreme, “may we never forget that in the sunshine of our lives, through the storm and after the rain — it is all with God — in all ways forever. ALL PRAISE TO GOD. With love to all, I thank you.” Thank YOU, Mr. Coltrane, for showing us that music resonates with the most fundamental dimensions of our existence.
Brian Landrus
A Love Supreme had a monumental impact on me as an artist and human. When I was 16, I bought the CD. I started listening to it in the parking lot before driving home, and remember sitting there and feeling unable to move. I sat there and listened to the entire album before driving home. The music hit me in a different way than any music before. The spirituality and dedication in the music is so powerful, so fresh, so unique, so clear. This moment enabled me to contemplate the purpose and possibilities of music. The clear emotion of Coltrane surpasses technique and goes straight to the soul. The compositional aspects are on the highest level, equal to any large-scale symphonic work by the masters of the classical canon. The universality of the soulful impact of Coltrane’s artistry was encapsulated by my daughter Ruby a couple months back when we were listening to the album again, and Ruby said, “Daddy, it sounds like he’s crying through his saxophone.”
Noah Preminger
This album always creates an interesting musical conversation. Even though Trane is my hero tenfold over anyone else, I just never really fell in love with the songs on this record. It could be that I heard the album later on in my studies, after My Favorite Things, Trane/Hartman and the more straight shit he did earlier in his life, so it didn’t have that nostalgic thing, or maybe, in part, it’s the religious component which has always been a turnoff. Trane sounds great and the rest of the band murders on this, but I feel the most important quality is the unity and synthesis of direction, vibe and energy within the band. The boot that’s called One Down One Up: Live at the Half Note, recorded about four months after A Love Supreme, is my numero uno favorite recording ever. I remember the first time I heard it was with Bob Moses at his pad, and he was pointing out how perfectly Trane’s 1/8th notes lined up with Elvin’s ride; that changed how I listen to rhythmic interaction. The period around A Love Supreme and One Down One Up is some of the highest-level improvisation you’ll ever hear. I’d love to hear someone do that in a modern context.
I laid on my bed with my Discman and headphones, tears streaming down my face, and yet, I felt empowered.
Jon Irabagon
John Coltrane’s incredible album A Love Supreme was a commercial and critical success as well as a continuing inspiration for generations of future jazz musicians. I have dozens of friends (musicians and non-musicians) that count it as one of their Desert Island albums, and I’ve listened repeatedly to A Love Supreme to help me through challenging times in my life. I worked on a cruise ship for a week and each night snuck up to the main deck and watched the stars with A Love Supreme as the soundtrack.
A Love Supreme is also a seminal album that opened the door to Coltrane’s later works — albums that are still to this day some of the most forward-thinking, challenging and misunderstood jazz albums of all time. The modal forays and forward momentum throughout A Love Supreme expand and fracture in the later albums, but the blueprint is found here. Musicians everywhere are indebted to A Love Supreme, an album that perfectly captured Coltrane’s music and philosophy in late 1964. With the advantage of foresight, we are lucky to have gotten almost three more years of Coltrane’s life to see where and how these seeds would grow and blossom.
Jeff Coffin
I have been a visitor in the room where John Coltrane wrote A Love Supreme and it was like most other rooms I’ve been in. What makes that space sacred was what happened within those four walls. Sequestered from his family, Coltrane seemed to divine the entire project during a time of intense personal reflection and spiritual growth. We have all had moments where we thought and felt about our past and future, but I think Coltrane was able to get those thoughts and feelings to manifest themselves onto the written page and into actual vibration.
A Love Supreme is as much about Coltrane’s personal sound as it is the recording itself. His tone quality is quite vocal and it sounds like he is singing and praying all at once. For me, this recording is an archetype of humanity’s relationship with spirit. This recording speaks to those who have felt the presence of oneness and the spirit of unity in their lives and it’s as relevant now as it was then. Coltrane was sharing his spiritual journey with us and it was all about connection and love. It still is. It’s truly a love supreme.
It is a reminder to create with intention.
Allen Lowe
I was barely 15 years old when I heard A Love Supreme for the first time (it was 1969). I didn’t get it. I didn’t — well, I didn’t hate it but I didn’t exactly like it, though it intrigued me. I wasn’t exactly provincial in my musical tastes and attitudes. I had just started to play the saxophone, and was immediately taken by Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy. But I had also read some criticism of Trane, by the great and pioneering jazz critic Martin Williams, who was excited by Ornette in particular, but who had major reservations about Trane, whose drone-like improvisations he thought went on for too long.
Now, also remember that by 1969 jazz had already gone far into the Freedom Principle (per John Litweiler). But I was young, lived out in the ’burbs, and was just getting into Bird, Cannonball, and then Mingus with Dolphy. And Ornette from his earliest recordings. Trane’s late work was a little confusing to me (my mother also had a recording of this Village Vanguard performance which included “Alabama”). And I took Williams, who obviously at this point knew much more about jazz than I did, seriously; I also agreed with him from my own listening experience. I had heard the album Worktime, and became obsessed with Sonny Rollins. And when I later heard Sonny’s Victor recordings of jazz standards it cemented my preference. I think what I preferred, at this point, was a triadic approach to composing and playing, especially as this approach reflected a type of post-bop phrasing. Sonny had stayed with that approach; Trane had not.
So I listened in reverse; I had heard Trane with ’50s Miles, but now I listened to Giant Steps and Blue Train, and I knew something was happening (and I didn’t, to quote Bob Dylan, know what it was). A few years passed, and one day I was listening to A Love Supreme (in a record store I was working in) and it was as though the younger me had never really listened; it was hypnotic, intense, and — downright conservative by so-called “free jazz” standards. Coltrane’s long-view approach sounded like the discovery of a certain scalar essence, of a type that had for some time been hidden in the music as it emerged from bebop (though I am sure a lot more people than I had recognized this years before). It suddenly sounded perfectly logical, directed, and beautiful to my more mature ears. I still loved Sonny, but this was a world that Trane had essentially discovered, like a latter-day explorer of lost continents.
And though I actually did not start playing saxophone professionally for almost another 10 years (I was a late starter), I finally got it and absorbed it, as some of us do, into my own musical unconsciousness without looking to emulate it. As a matter of fact I have a session coming up in a few months with Darius Jones and Matthew Shipp, and revisiting A Love Supreme this afternoon to refresh my memory in order to write this piece has reminded me how much life there is in what by now sounds like an old-school approach to (modal, or scale-based) composition and improvisation. My own music is, harmonically, very dense, and sometimes these sorts of modal setups feel like a cleansing of the musical palette, a way of refocusing and refreshing my own creative energy.
Ivo Perelman
John Coltrane’s work was marked by unique events that determined radical changes in his way of playing and that influenced and continue to influence musicians of all types. In my case, the recording of A Love Supreme was extremely influential in my musical formation. Until then, my energy had been focused on the form, lines and classical harmonies of Jazz. A Love Supreme enlightened me and opened a strong spiritual path in my understanding of what it means to improvise to this day: a direct conversation with the unknown, with the angelic world, with God. After the initial positive shock, I resumed my interest in the historical classical forms of Jazz, but this time they occupied a secondary role. The cultivation of total honesty and musical-spiritual purity that I learned from A Love Supreme indoctrinated me forever.
Caroline Davis
In his liner notes, Trane shares that he “entered into a phase that was contradictory to the pledge and away from the esteemed path.” How vulnerable! How exposed! I was slowly veering off my path in Texas, when close friend and saxophonist Dani Mekonnen loaned me his copy. I laid on my bed with my Discman and headphones, tears streaming down my face, and yet, I felt empowered. The whole album pulls as devotional music. That part carried onward — I often play “Acknowledgement” with the Freedom First band featuring Keith LaMar, wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death by execution. During every performance, he calls in from Ohio State Penitentiary, reciting prose and poetry, and we circle around him, adding musical breadth to his message. Every once in a while we get a reminder that we’re on a call with an inmate at OSP, but we move through it together. We end every show singing “A Love Supreme” together, and because of the time lag, he’s ever so slightly behind. And so we form a circle, in the meantime, until we’re ready to devote time to search for that esteemed path.
Ben Wendel
I first heard A Love Supreme when I was 12 years old. It completely blew open my mind and changed me forever. The power and alchemy of the album cannot be overstated. Coltrane’s quartet created a sonic impact that stretches all the way to this moment and will continue well beyond our time. Every artist that aspires to play this music must at some point acknowledge and study this album. That six note theme that Coltrane plays over and over on the first track is an invocation, prayer, and spiritual code that continues to give to all who listen. It remains iconic and immensely influential, and still impacts me as powerfully now as it did years ago.
Isaiah Collier
A Love Supreme is truly one of the most pivotal and most significant albums that ever merges Spiritualism dating our way back to the continent, but channeling through the current circumstances that were existing in the 1960s. Trane expanded and connected multiple generations and linked all them in one record and it is still on the precipice of creative heights. Many artists today, myself included, are still chasing that type of sacred connection with God and sound.
Melissa Aldana
As I’ve aged, A Love Supreme has become more than just an album — it’s a living dialogue with Coltrane’s spirit. What I once admired for its technical mastery now resonates as a profound journey of self-discovery. The deeper I listen, the more I hear not just the music, but the search for meaning behind it. It is a reminder to create with intention, to embrace vulnerability, and to trust the unknown, both in music and in life.
Coltrane’s blow in the second part of Love Supreme seemed to me as an extraterrestrial pattern — a message from space. As if I were in a parallel universe, a different reality.
James Brandon Lewis
What inspires me about A Love Supreme is it’s the by-product of a relationship with the creator/with God. It’s also multi-disciplinary when you think of the inclusion of John’s prayer/prose/poetry for God, within the album’s notes. As a kid, first learning of how Coltrane’s grandfathers were ministers allowed me to feel connected to Trane, because my Dad is a minister. When you’re young you want to connect with your heroes because maybe that’s the “secret” to their greatness, and so maybe that will make you great. A Love Supreme gave me the courage to know it’s OK for music to embody belief, that music is imbued with a life lived and living. Whatever Coltrane said the music is about, I believe him; musicians give meaning to music. I take the artist at his word, and have received his offering, his testimony, his prayer. I inspire to give a similar meaning and intention idiosyncratic to who I am.
Mat Walerian
For me, my first encounter with the album was kind of an intervention into the Matrix.
I came across the album at the end of primary school, in one of the two music stores where I left all my money — in one I was buying cassettes, mainly of avant-garde and strong alternative music, the other only sold CDs of jazz and classical music.
I had bought many jazz records there before, including Coltrane’s. Usually, as a person who also studied art, when I had a choice between a few albums by the same artist, I chose by the cover — for purely aesthetic reasons — I paid a lot of attention to the covers, since I bought everything sooner or later anyway — I bought it in the order I liked it visually.
This cover caught my attention — interestingly, the cover photo was not taken by Chuck Stewart, who photographed the session, but by the producer himself — Bob Thiele. This expression on the face of Coltrane, whose music I already knew, but mainly from Atlantic and Prestige, before Impulse, where he always presented himself as a powerful giant. His facial expression on this cover caught my attention. Please remember that these were the times before the Internet, and I had access to musicians’ photos mainly through cover art on purchased albums.
This facial expression was specific; a giant, a man who seemed to me then to be the absolute and undisputed hegemon in the history of art — in the open category — constituting a league in itself, appeared to me in this photo as an adult who, under the influence of some event, suddenly collided with something that is greater than himself in an absolute sense. It then seemed to me that maybe he was scared of something, he was looking ahead, but not at anything specific, full of humility and even with a little fear in his eyes. I don’t know why, but it seemed quite significant to me at the time.
I always went shopping to the music store with a portable Sony CD player, which I received as a gift from my mother, in fact, I went everywhere with it. Usually, right after buying the album, I had to play it on headphones. While still in the store, I put the CD into the player and as soon as the album started, I had a strange feeling, as if I had suddenly aged — not extremely, but I felt older for the first time in my life — it’s hard for me to express it. A few years older. It’s that strange kind of feeling when, as a child, you know that something happened, but you don’t know exactly what — but you feel it mentally.
I stood in the store for a while and went outside. I remember exactly how I slowly walked down the street through the old town. It was almost 30 years ago, and I remember the moment perfectly.
Then the first part ended and the second one began. The moment when the saxophone came in — nothing in my entire history of contact with music has ever fucked me up as much as the opening of the second movement when heard it for the first time. Nothing has ever hit me in the face with greater impact than the opening of the second part of A Love Supreme. I didn’t feel like I was a few years older — I was a few years older at that point.
I stood frozen on the sidewalk and said to myself — fuck, what happened, completely disoriented. I felt like my brain had been rewired. I had the impression that I found myself in a place where I could only be there thanks to this caliber of aesthetic experience — it was a strictly mystical experience for a teenage child, I was maybe 14 years old, maybe younger — the end of primary school.
While writing this, I remember this feeling perfectly after almost 30 years … I remember this situation, the weather, perfectly, with the greatest details.
Then, whenever my brain recalled the word saxophone, I could hear in my ears the passion with which this great man entered when opening the second part of A Love Supreme.
As an absolute, extraterrestrial definition of the phenomenon of music in its pure form. As for the sound of the tenor saxophone — neither classical, nor avant-garde, nor in between — league and quality in itself. The second impression that usually comes to my mind in terms of the tenor sound is Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins from their joint album — but for years Coltrane’s blow in the second part of Love Supreme seemed to me as an extraterrestrial pattern — a message from space. As if I were in a parallel universe, a different reality.
After listening to this album, most things always sounded childish to me. I will add that at that time I was only a jazz listener, I started playing the saxophone only a few years later, and I didn’t really start practicing and playing until I was 20. I used to think that maybe at that moment I had subconsciously decided that this was what I wanted to do, to pursue music, not understanding the phenomenon, but subconsciously feeling its power and the privilege of participating in a phenomenon that was not of earthly origin, extra-dimensional.
The impact of this album has and will always be the same — identical to the one at the time of its release. This album is not a work of art, it is just a pure idea. It will always sound like it was recorded today, or rather tomorrow, and it will sound the same anywhere in space. The term timeless is not entirely adequate, it is intergalactic stuff of the highest order — it is timeless in the physical, mathematical sense.
While listening, it warps time and space — when it ends, it seems that the album lasted 5 minutes — there is probably no other recording that flies by so quickly.
In Japan, this album sealed Coltrane’s status as a divine phenomenon — in the full sense of the word — I could comment extensively on the cultural background here, as a person who has been studying Japanese culture for years, but suffice it to say this much — in Japan after the release of this album Coltrane was perceived as a divine spirit.
I listen to this album very rarely, only once every few years. Asked to share my story about it yesterday, I turned it on and listened to it while sitting in my armchair, wanting to see what would happen. After the album ended, I realized that I had been sitting in my chair for the next 15 minutes with my mind completely blank, as if I had defragmented my disk.
In every moment of life and culture, this album will be current, even new, always having new meanings.
It’s not a stretch to say that the other three members of the quartet did not share Coltrane’s spiritual fervor, but the recording is a testament to the best aspects of chamber music; when four musicians are intellectually and spiritually dedicated to each other.
Bob Mintzer
John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme recording was striking to me in many ways. Firstly, the spirituality in the music was very powerful. The notion of acknowledging God in all things was evident in the music. It was hard to miss. Secondly, Trane’s lyricism in the way he approached the tunes was very beautiful and lyrical. He was, in effect, singing to a higher power. There was a lot of variety in Coltrane’s playing here. He would toggle between a whisper and a scream. Solos were built to incredible climaxes. It seemed the band was on the same wavelength in terms of expressing spirituality. They played as one, making this wonderful sound. For me, A Love Supreme was one of the all time iconic recordings in jazz music.
Ada Rovatti
Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, to me, transcended any musical formula. It is more a sensorial experience, like a hypnotic state to aim for. It’s a constant reminder to all of us about the power of music, and the search and understanding of what A Love Supreme stands for.
Michael Marcus
Mr. Coltrane’s quintessential recording A Love Supreme is an “offering” that he gave to the world, bringing forth through his music the message of love, peace, and harmony. His exquisite tone, phrasing, and harmonics inspire us daily! All of us have been graced eternally!
Joe Lovano
John Coltrane lived with A Love Supreme in his music and heart his whole life. This particular recording was a deep reflection and realization of his spiritual growth and development as a man and a musician. It was a new beginning of many offerings to come that captured the true essence of what Maestro John Coltrane was all about.
María Grand
I remember sitting with a mentor who I am deeply grateful for and pondering over the symmetrical nature of the opening line of “Acknowledgment,” and how it relates, also symmetrically, to the beginning of the bass line. Years later, a man I deeply loved would play this record in the car when he knew I felt low. We’d drive around and I meditated while the music etched itself in my mind. This is a record I’ve listened to for its emotional impact as well as for the nuts and bolts of its construction. To me it represents all that Coltrane was about: otherworldly love and incredibly precise technique.
Charles McPherson
When I first heard it, I understood it. Trane’s body of work is pretty damn wonderful, man. This is just one album that’s reflecting a certain aspect of the man. The main thing, for me, about what A Love Supreme represents is a very verbal way that’s not hidden or arcane — it’s out there for anyone to understand — of how important this piece of music was to this man as a human being. And it’s also he very much amalgamates that part of himself to the craft, to the music. That’s the DNA of what the significance of A Love Supreme is, him saying, “Yes, this is who I am and how I feel this way about these things.” And it’s not like you have to guess, this is what he’s saying. Now, the execution of the music is exactly the way you should play it if this is your motif and way of thinking, then the notes being played by everybody involved, how they are playing it is going to fit like a hand inside a glove. Everything is where it should be.
Shabaka
I was introduced to A Love Supreme when I was about 16. Up until then I wasn’t really so interested in jazz, but when I started getting interested in it my mother said there are two big jazz albums that you need to listen to, which were Bitches Brew and A Love Supreme. So she bought me both on CD. And I find that all of the albums I think are consequential, I never really appreciate them when I first listen to them. But there’s something that stays with me and makes me come back and back. So when I first heard it, I thought it was good, but it didn’t really hit me with the full impact of its significance. But there was something that made me come back to it, like over the course of many years. And I think it was when I was in college in my early 20s that, at some point, it just kinda hit me like how amazing the record was and how something about it I could feel kept drawing me back to it. I actually understood what that thing was. I think it was the arc of the intensity, actually. When I was studying, I did this graph, because I became quite obsessed with it, not in terms of the specific notes that Coltrane was playing, but how the arc of his solos went up and down. I put it on a graph to see the actual contour of his lines moved up and down like a waveform. And that’s what really struck me, actually, how he holds the intensity and pushes it forwards and backwards with the group like they are one bubbling unit that’s on a journey together. Later on is when the spiritualism of the album became more significant to me in that you can’t separate the fact that it’s literally his offering to his beliefs and his spiritual cosmology. And that’s a really beautiful thing to have someone say this is my offering and this is what he thinks is his vision of the world in sonic form. Then there’s the last section, “Psalm,” it’s been quite influential to me in terms of listening to music thinking that there is a literal narrative that can be said through the music, because obviously he’s reading the psalm through the notes. I never really appreciated what that meant, in terms of what it means to play words and have those words dictate the contour of the notes and the intensity of what notes get sounded out. It made me listen to music in a different way just thinking that people are singing through their instruments.
Branford Marsalis
Much has been made about Coltrane’s spiritual dedication in A Love Supreme. That part is undeniable, but to my ears, it’s not the core issue at hand regarding that performance. It’s not a stretch to say that the other three members of the quartet did not share Coltrane’s spiritual fervor, but the recording is a testament to the best aspects of chamber music; when four musicians are intellectually and spiritually dedicated to each other. Given the obsession with individuality in jazz post WWII, and American society writ large, I cannot imagine another jazz group — in that time or any other since — attaining such a high artistic and emotional achievement.
Darius Jones
The first time I saw the cover of the album A Love Supreme I was in the library and I didn’t know who John Coltrane was. I just thought it looked cool and I was trying to learn more about The Music. I was spellbound by what I heard. I was raised in the church and that album made me want to know more about him as a person. I remember getting a biography and finding out about his spiritual side and everything. In many ways I felt safe with Trane, like as a musician he was a safe place for me.
Coltrane is the perfect example of what it means to be human. He was flawed, and he changed. He was imperfect, but he worked on his imperfections. I think we love him because in him we see the potential of being true to oneself and actually working at it. I find his humanity to be the most profound aspect of who he was and how that is reflected through his art.
Vanessa Collier
A Love Supreme is a seminal record for any sax player, any musician, really. It is the pinnacle of what we musicians hope to achieve: a supernatural, spiritual, and emotional connection between the instrument and our internal voice; the expression of the innermost of our soul.
Linda Sikhakhane
Every time I listen to this masterpiece I get this sensation of being born again. Beyond the mastery of the four thematic pieces that make up the suite — this sonic output transports me to a ritual experience that is transcendental, something that is deeply embedded in African music. My first encounter with the album led me into a portal of collective memory, and it continues to be a well that I drink from in pursuit of the future.
Daniel Carter
I have no words that convey the profound impact that John Coltrane’s music has made on me, and my entire musical life. I first heard A Love Supreme back in 1965, but it’s only just now that I became aware of Coltrane’s overdub at the very end of the recording, on “Psalm,” at 6:30. ❖
Ron Hart is the editor-in-chief of Rock and Roll Globe. As a freelancer, he has contributed to numerous publications, including Billboard, Spin, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Vice, and Relix. Find him on X at @mistertribune.
