Why John Coltrane's best-known album was the final salvo of a dying art form
By C.W. | CAMBRIDGE, MA
IT BEGINS with the most famous gong in jazz. A few seconds later, the double bass takes up a four-note “Love Supreme” motif. John Coltrane starts a blistering saxophone solo. And 30 minutes later it is all over. But it still sounds as fresh as it did 50 years ago.
Coltrane, one of the jazz greats, died in 1967, aged 40, from liver cancer. He was a productive artist, often recording several albums in a single year. “A Love Supreme”, which was released in February 1965 is his best-known work and the one that has received the most attention from critics.
A lot of hyperbole surrounds “Supreme”. It is not significantly better than many of Coltrane’s other albums from the period (such as, for example, “Sun Ship” or “Crescent”). Its fame probably rests on a few other things. Firstly, it is one of his more accessible albums of the mid-1960s. “Supreme” was released around the time that Coltrane reached the height of his technical powers. But it was also a time when he was losing interest in tonality. Many of his albums from this period are highly abstract, the products of “happenings” in jazz clubs. Some, to an unfamiliar ear, are barely listenable (try getting through “Live at the Village Vanguard Again!”). “Supreme” manages to combine the technical mastery and intellectualism of mid-1960s Coltrane, but is reasonably easy listening.
“Supreme” is also Coltrane’s most spiritual album. And for this reason it gives some insight into a person that no one, not even the most devoted jazz fans, feels that they really know. He died young. He practised furiously, it is said for up to 12 hours a day, becoming perhaps the most technically accomplished saxophone player ever. Unlike other jazz giants, such as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, there are few saucy anecdotes about him. So Coltrane fans have to piece together what they can about the man.
While recovering from heroin addiction in the late 1950s, Coltrane became deeply religious, and “Supreme” has explicitly spiritual overtones. In the liner notes, he calls the work a “humble offering to Him”. In the first movement, “Acknowledgment”, Coltrane chants the words “A Love Supreme” in a gospel-like manner. (Some people reckon that he is actually saying “Allah Supreme”—a claim that even serious jazz scholars do not see as totally implausible.)
The fourth movement, “Psalm”, is a recitation of a poem in which Coltrane “speaks” the words with his saxophone. You can follow along with the words here (it is quite moving). The piece ends in glorious colour, with Coltrane overdubbing a second saxophone.
Lastly, “Supreme” is important because of the context in which was released. Coltrane was dead a few months afterwards. No saxophonist has since earned the same level of popular and critical acclaim. Around the time that “Supreme” came out, jazz's popularity started to plunge. Rock bands posed a deadly threat. Jazz, with its dinner jackets and small clubs, started to seem desperately uncool in comparison to amplified guitars and flamboyant clothes. Lots of jazz musicians dramatically changed their styles, in order to appeal to a new, young audience. Three years after “Supreme”, Davis would release an album called “Miles in the Sky” (with a clear nod to the Beatles); he jammed with Jimi Hendrix. Herbie Hancock almost entirely dispensed with conventional jazz. Distorted guitars, electric basses, rock rhythms and big sunglasses accompanied the musical shift.
In that sense, widespread reverence for “Supreme” is partially explained by what it now signifies. It was the last album of what most people would consider “proper” jazz to have had popular appeal. It was a final salvo of an art form that was dying, and which has never really recovered.
