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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.
Coltrane repotedly wrote this album after seeing or having a vision of God and dedicated this lp to Him. You will never experience music like this again. Play the Lp 100 times and you will notice something different each and every time. Unbelieveable. Play this Lp in an enclosed room at full volume (as far as you can go) on a decent turntable set up with a tube amp.
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.
If you have any interest in jazz or want to listen to truly brilliant music you have to have this. At a time when most music seems to be about bling and ho's here is music that is both virtuosic and speaks to its listeners personally. These days John Coltrane is followed with an almost religious fervour, which is appropriate for someone who made quite possibly the greatest devotional music since the days of JS Bach. The secret of this is that the music never preaches at you but simply has Coltrane trying to musically describe his love for the almighty.The highlight of this album is obviously Coltranes ultra-expressive tenor sax playing which was once famously described as "sheets of sound" but the playing of the rest of the quartet is also exquisite, especially Elvin Jones' incredible drumming.
Influences from earlier types of jazz are combined with a classical sensibility. It's a good example of avant-garde jazz that sounds good, that's not so far out that it's hard to listen to. A spiritual feeling is there for those who can sense it. After reading about this in the context of Coltrane's autobiography, I thought I would either hate or love this. When I listened I was surprised to find that I just liked it.
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