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All selections composed by John Coltrane.


Mstr. No.
& Take Time
1>Part 1 Acknowledgement 90243 07:43
2>Part 2 Resolution 90244-7 07:20
3>Part 3 Pursuance / 4>Part 4 Psalm 90245 10:42/ 7:05
John Coltrane (tenor saxophone); McCoy Tyner (piano);
Jimmy Garrison (bass); Elvin Jones (drums).
Track 1: Add Coltrane (vocal).
Recorded December 9, 1964 at Van Gelder Recording Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Original-LP issue: A Love Supreme Impulse AS-77
Original recordings produced by Bob Thiele
Original recordings engineered by Rudy Van Gelder
Original-LP cover photograph by Bob Thiele
Original-LP cover design by George Gray/Viceroy
Original-LP liner illustration by Victor Kalin
Tracks are in their original-LP sequence.
Master numbers show the order in which the tracks were recorded.
All previous digital incarnations of A Love Supreme have been derived from a 1971 second-
generation master tape. While this tape did not suffer from the processing and alterations that noise
reduction systems cause, it did add equalization and compression to the original recording and had an
inexplicable flaw in the left channel during the first three minutes of Pursuance. The tape was not phys-
ically flawed, so it must be assumed that the problem was caused in the 1971 transfer process.
This situation was a cause of great concern until it occurred to us that A Love Supreme was
originally issued in 1965 in territories other than the United States. The hope was that we could find
a contemporaneous copy of the original master that would not have had this affliction. A March 1965
master was found at EMIs London vaults and dispatched to New York. Not only was the problem absent
on that tape, but it had no added equalization or compression. A relieved Rudy Van Gelder declared it to
be as close to the real thing as one could get in the analog domain without having the original tape: This
tape preserves the sonic details with vivid accuracy: Elvins cymbals, the deep intensity of the vocal chant,
and the openness of the group sound.
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JOHN COLTRANE A LOVE SUPREME
At the moment of conception, every great human gesture took equal
standing among the details and demands of daily life. While creating his
most ageless canvases, Picasso stepped back and swept the studio. While
developing their masterpieces, Beethoven paid the bills, James Joyce lit out
for the bar, and Louis Armstrong took five and grabbed lunch.
For John Coltrane in 1964, inspiration coincided with dirty plates and
diapers. As Alice Coltrane recalls, they had recently moved into a secluded
house in Dix Hills, Long Island, and their first son had just been born.
It was late summer or early fall, because the weather was nice at the time in New York.
There was an unoccupied area in the house where we hardly ever went; sometimes a fam-
ily member would visit [and] would stay there. John would go up there, take little portions
of food every now and then, spending his time pondering over the music he heard.
Alice remained busy with John Jr. and Michelle, her four-year-old by
her first marriage. Eventually reappearing, Coltrane normally deep in
thought, preoccupied with musical matters was unusually light-hearted.
It was like Moses coming down from the mountain, it was so beautiful. He walked down
and there was that joy, that peace in his face, tranquillity. So I said, Tell me everything,
we didnt see you really for four or five days. . . . He said, This is the first time that I have
received all of the music for what I want to record, in a suite. This is the first time I have
everything, everything ready.
Three months later, Coltrane took his four-part suite into the studio and
called it A Love Supreme.
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A LOVE SUPREME TODAY
Four decades on, Coltranes best-known album rides an ever-ascend-
ing path of reverence and reach. To jazz cognoscenti, it is the pinnacle of
Coltranes Classic Quartet, the collective high-water mark of the saxo-
phonist in the company of pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison,
and drummer Elvin Jones. To generations of music lovers whose general
embrace elbows aside considerations of category, the album resonates
with a universal pull. To Coltrane devotees, it proves as selfrevealing a
statement as any he recorded. If you want to know who John Coltrane
was, maintains Elvin Jones, you have to know A Love Supreme.
To the legions who heed the albums spiritual call and to those who
respond to Coltranes confessional notes of redemption and praise the
album remains a seminal gift to God, a humble offering to Him. Years
before rock stars honored swamis with recordings, decades before hip-hop
CDs listed the obligatory shout-out to the Almighty, Coltrane stepped
apart from the hip jazz elite and effected a public spiritual disrobing. I
humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy
through music, he wrote, confirming his indebtedness. I feel this has
been granted through His grace.
DECEMBER 9, 1964
It was a Wednesday, the middle of a typically busy week at Rudy Van
Gelders self-designed reverberant studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
Coltrane pulled his Chevy station wagon into the wooded driveway some-
where around 7 p.m. to meet the engineer, his sidemen, and his producer,
Impulse Records chief Bob Thiele. Night sessions were the rule rather
than the exception for the saxophonist, but one thing about that evening
stood out, as Van Gelder recalls.
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One reason I enjoyed working with John [was that] he would usually record only one
or two titles per session. . . . An unusual thing about the A Love Supreme session
is that he had pre-planned all the music. He did the full suite in one session.
Coltrane had carefully arranged the evening to follow the course of
the album. Three interlocking segments were to be recorded in succes-
sion: Parts 1 and 2 (as Thiele would label them) would be edited together
as Side A of the resulting LP; the lengthy final part intended as Side B
would be tackled in one take. Provided only brief instruction, Coltranes
sidemen fell into their familiar routine, and recognized a few of the
melodies. Says Tyner:
On A Love Supreme, actually we had played some of the music in the clubs
before we recorded it. . . . I think thats why John liked to play the songs for a
while, to open them up. The more familiar you get with it, the more interesting
places you can go with the song.
The sessions first complete take was a keeper. Acknowledgement
a loose minor-key vamp proved the theme of the suite (often reinter-
preted and retitled as simply A Love Supreme).
It opens with a rubato benediction in the unlikely key (for Coltrane)
of E major, cued by an unlikely (for jazz) stroke on a Chinese gong,
warmly welcoming the listener. It soon unveils the famous four-note bass
line that becomes the suites mantra as the saxophonist adopts and ran-
domly transposes the melodic phrase, eliciting a variety of interpreta-
tions. To some, it denotes the pursuit of a harmonic freedom sprung from
Coltranes tenure with Miles Davis (the modal experimentation on Kind of
Blue is a brilliant example); to others, it seems a preview of the free, atonal
RUDY VAN GELDER
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explorations to come. To Alice Coltrane, its evidence of a self-hewn philoso-
phy expressed through his instrument, as she suggested in 1967:
He liked to draw an analogy between mankind and his horn, explaining that one group
might represent the upper register, another the mid-range, and yet another the deeper
notes, but that it took all to make the whole.
In the suites most startling moment, Coltrane removes the saxophone
from his lips and leans close to the microphone, intoning the almost doleful
signature chant. As an accented piano chord clearly cues the vocal section,
one can hear that Coltrane began chanting off-mike; a barely audible
supreme makes itself known. Acknowledgement ends with Garrison
taking a loose, tonally shifting solo, one side of a seam to be stitched to
the bassists double-stopped introduction to Part 2.
Resolution offers a more familiar, swing-like structure, defined by
its urgently played melody. As Coltrane admitted, his explosive entrance
derived more from instinct than artful plan: For me, when I go from a calm
moment to a moment of extreme tension, the only factors that push me are
emotional factors, to the exclusion of all musical considerations.
Excluding any false starts, Pursuance / Psalm was almost assuredly
another one-take wonder. The just-under-eighteen-minute performance that
closed the session was an impressive display of compression and emotional
balance.
Pursuance reveals the quartet maneuvering from Joness brief rolling
introduction (I had to play something that was simple and clear. So I play-
ed half of an Afro-Cuban beat, and it worked out!) to the finger-snapping
theme of Pursuance (a cousin to Coltranes Mr. P.C.) to Tyners cascading
improvisation, which builds to a definitive example of the quartets high-en-
ergy solo-to-solo hand-off. Boosted by a crescendo of piano chords, Coltrane
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ELVIN JONES
steps in at full throttle. In a relatively small frame two and a half min-
utes he achieves the same raspy-throated transcendence and free-flowing
lyricism his legendary twenty-minute live solos reached nightly.
Like a spent runner, Coltrane skips into the restatement of the
Pursuance theme as Jones closes the tune with a fusillade of shots to
cymbals and snare. Emphasizing the symmetric structure of Coltranes
suite, Garrison emerges to take his solo turn, replete with strummed
figures and single-note runs, acting as a buffer before the suites most
introspective movement.
The fourth and last part is a musical narration of the theme, A Love
Supreme, Coltrane wrote in his liner notes. It is entitled Psalm. As
music educator Lewis Porter outlined in his book John Coltrane: His Life and
Music (University of Michigan Press, 1998), the shape and flow of Psalm
derived directly from the saxophonists poem, printed on the albums in-
ner cover. With Tyner, Garrison, and Jones (on the unusual choice of tym-
pani) providing atmospheric support, Coltrane reads the words, following
the cadences of the text from the opening phrase, A love supreme, to the
final Amen. The oft-repeated phrase Thank you God develops an incan-
tatory ring. Like a whispered prayer, the effect of Psalm is hushed and
extremely private; the suites reflective point of closure stands as one of
Coltranes most serene, soul-baring performances.
However, Coltrane felt a more dramatic denouement was still needed.
Van Gelder recalls that he
came into the control room with Bob Thiele and asked me if he
could add something to the end of the piece, which we did. . . .
At that time I was already familiar with the overdubbing process.
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Having inserted saxophone obbligatos on the 1963 John Coltrane and
Johnny Hartman album, Coltrane was comfortable with multitracking as well.
He asked that the session tape be rewound and stepped back in the studio to
accent the swell and fade of the final seconds of Psalm. Thus, on opposing
tracks, it is possible to hear Garrisons bowing blend with his strumming,
Joness cymbal crash accompany the thunder of his mallets, and Coltranes
wide, upper-register vibrato mix with his own low-end phrasing: a virtual
if momentary septet.
Coltranes experimental drive compelled him to return to the studio the
next day, with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp and bassist Art Davis added
to the quartet. The results, now featured on A Love Supreme (Deluxe Edition)
Impulse 314 589 945-2, were not deemed issue-worthy at the time. Limited
to two, chant-less takes of Acknowledgement, the second session proved a
blueprint for later, more successful quartet-plus essays (Nature Boy the
following February; Meditations almost a year later); compelled Coltrane to
thank Shepp and Davis in his liner notes (triggering decades of speculation
about the lost A Love Supreme recordings); and was ultimately bypassed as
Alice Coltrane recalled. We talked about that, and he said this is the final
it will be the quartet [version].
THE ALBUM
With unusual rapidity and the intent of elevating A Love Supreme
beyond past Impulse titles (the cover traded the labels orange-and-black
standard for a black-on-white elegance) the album was readied for mar-
ket. The saxophonists favorite photograph of himself, taken by Thiele two
years before at the Duke Ellington & John Coltrane session, was chosen for the
cover. The God-praising poem, a letter to the listener, and a portrait by
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noted artist and jazz fan Victor Kalin were placed on the interior of the
albums gatefold. By late February 1965, copies of the new album began to
carry Coltranes music and message to a wider audience than ever before.
A Love Supreme benefited from good timing. ABC-Paramount, Impulses
parent company, was in expansion mode, riding the industry-wide wave of
success that followed the British invasion. At sales conventions and in
trade journals, Coltranes latest effort received equal billing with hit-laden
albums from Ray Charles and the Impressions. The label exhibited its con-
fidence with full-page ads in Down Beat and Jazz magazine. Some critics
confessed reservation with the albums heart-on-sleeve religiosity, but most
nonetheless delivered ecstatic reviews.
Beyond the commercial, other well-timed factors helped boost the
album. At the decades midpoint, the seeds of a collective political and
spiritual change were set to flower. A Love Supreme reached out and influ-
enced those people who were into peace, Miles Davis noted astutely,
hippies and people like that. The Grateful Deads Phil Lesh offers a
telling snapshot of his mixed-ethnic neighborhood in San Francisco,
soon to become the cradle of national youth culture.
Thats one of the records I would hear walking through the Haight [Haight-Ashbury]
on a spring night, all over town. Youd be walking, and somebodyd be playing [Bob
Dylans] Bringing It All Back Home, and somebodyd be playing [Miles Daviss]
Sketches of Spain, and another time it was A Love Supreme. It was all just
coming out of peoples windows.
Within months, from college dorms and ghetto apartments, on jazz
radio and underground FM stations alike, the album began to emerge
as Coltranes career-defining, genredefying classic.
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As 1965 ended, the music industry and public spoke in unison. A Love
Supreme was nominated for two Grammys (it would yield to winners
Ramsey Lewis and Lalo Schifrin); Down Beats year-end readers poll picked
Coltrane as tenor saxophone player of the year and inducted him into the
magazines Hall of Fame. A Love Supreme was crowned album of the year.
It was to be the last time during his life that Coltrane enjoyed such a
unified front of support. The trajectory of the music that followed the
loose big-band charge of Ascension, the tenor-on-tenor fury of the live
recordings with Pharoah Sanders, the final multirhythmic duets with
drummer Rashied Ali on Interstellar Space tested and eroded his universal
appeal. From the piano bench in her husbands group, Alice Coltrane
watched as the crowds began to thin.
When he became avant garde . . . he lost many people, many followers, [but] there
was no way he could go back. . . . What he had already done often became obsolete
the next day. That was the type of mentality he had. . . . From A Love Supreme
onward, we were seeing a progression toward higher spiritual realization, higher
spiritual development.
Most enthusiasts agree that the album marks a departure point, a stark
line dividing the music that came before and after. But to Coltrane, it was
only another step in an ongoing journey. As a complete composition, he re-
turned to it only once, performing it on July 26, 1965 at an outdoor jazz
festival in Antibes, France.* I remember very definitely, Bob Thiele once
stated. I said, Which album do you really dig the most? Coltranes an-
swer: Well, I like them all. . . . After I listen to one for a few weeks, I stop
listening and forget about it.
Yet a vast, varied musical audience cannot. In sound, spirit, and name,
whether embraced as pure musical performance, heartfelt prayer, or some
*Fortunately recorded, and featured on A Love Supreme (Deluxe Edition) Impulse 314 589 945-2.
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subjective combination of the two, A Love Supreme emits an arc of influ-
ence that remains unbroken. Perhaps writer Nat Hentoff, who witnessed
the arrival of the album, sums it best, extolling Coltranes most renowned
work while returning it to its point of humble, mortal origin:
By the time A Love Supreme hit, Trane struck such a spiritual chord in so many
listeners that people started to think of him as being beyond human. I think thats
unfair. He was just a human being like you and me but he was willing to prac-
tice more, to do all the things that somebody has to do to excel. The real value in
what John Coltrane did was that what he accomplished, he did as a human.
Ashley Kahn
June 2002
Ashley Kahn is the author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece
(Da Capo Press, 2000) and A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltranes Signature Album
(Viking, 2002).
McCOY TYNER
JIMMY GARRISON
A LOVE SUPREME THE ORIGINAL LINER NOTES
DEAR LISTENER:
ALL PRAISE BE TO GOD TO WHOM ALL PRAISE IS DUE.
Let us pursue Him in the righteous path. Yes it is true; seek and ye shall
find. Only through Him can we know the most wondrous bequeathal.
During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awaken-
ing which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time,
in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make
others happy through music. 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 .
This album is 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.
May He help and strengthen all men in every good endeavor.
The music herein is presented in four parts. The first is entitled ACKNOWL-
EDGEMENT, the second, RESOLUTION, the third, PURSUANCE, and the fourth
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and last part is a musical narration of the theme, A LOVE SUPREME which
is written in the context; it is entitled PSALM.
In closing, I would like to thank the musicians who have contributed their
much appreciated talents to the making of this album and all previous
engagements.
To Elvin, James and McCoy, I would like to thank you for that which you
give each time you perform on your instruments. Also, to Archie Shepp
(tenor saxist) and to Art Davis (bassist) who both recorded on a track that
regrettably will not be released at this time; my deepest appreciation for
your work in music past and present. In the near future, I hope that we
will be able to further the work that was started here.
Thanks to producer Bob Thiele; to recording engineer, Rudy Van Gelder;
and the staff of ABC-Paramount records. Our appreciation and thanks to
all people of good will and good works the world over, for in the bank of
life is not good that investment which surely pays the highest and most
cherished dividends.
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 and forever.
ALL PRAISE TO GOD.
With love to all, I thank you,
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A LOVE SUPREME
I will do all I can to be worthy of Thee O Lord.
It all has to do with it.
Thank you God.
Peace.
There is none other.
God is. It is so beautiful.
Thank you God. God is all.
Help us to resolve our fears and weaknesses.
Thank you God.
In You all things are possible.
We know. God made us so.
Keep your eye on God.
God is. He always was. He always will be.
No matter what . . . it is God.
He is gracious and merciful.
It is most important that I know Thee.
Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thoughts,
fears and emotions time all related . . .
all made from one . . . all made in one.
Blessed be His name.
Thought waves heat waves all vibrations
all paths lead to God. Thank you God.
His way . . . it is so lovely . . . it is gracious.
It is merciful thank you God.
One thought can produce millions of vibrations
and they all go back to God . . . everything does.
Thank you God.
Have no fear . . . believe . . . thank you God.
The universe has many wonders. God is all.
His way . . . it is so wonderful.
Thoughts deeds vibrations, etc.
They all go back to God and He cleanses all.
He is gracious and merciful . . . thank you God.
Glory to God . . . God is so alive.
God is.
God loves.
May I be acceptable in Thy sight.
We are all one in His grace.
The fact that we do exist is acknowledgement
of Thee O Lord.
Thank you God.
God will wash away all our tears . . .
He always has . . .
He always will.
Seek Him everyday. In all ways seek God everyday.
Let us sing all songs to God
To whom all praise is due . . . praise God.
No road is an easy one, but they all
go back to God.
With all we share God.
It is all with God.
It is all with Thee.
Obey the Lord.
Blessed is He.
We are from one thing . . . the will of God . . .
thank you God.
I have seen God I have seen ungodly
none can be greater none can compare to God.
Thank you God.
He will remake us . . . He always has and He
always will.
It is true blessed be His name thank you God.
God breathes through us so completely . . .
so gently we hardly feel it . . . yet,
it is our everything.
Thank you God.
ELATION ELEGANCE EXALTATION
All from God.
Thank you God. Amen.
JOHN COLTRANE December, 1964
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Reissue
Produced by Ken Druker, Ashley Kahn, and Bryan Koniarz
Mastered by Rudy Van Gelder at Van Gelder Recording Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Studio production by Michael Cuscuna
Art directed by Hollis King
Designed by Edward ODowd
Art production managed by Sherniece Smith
Production assistance by Mark Smith
Photographs by Chuck Stewart except page 5 by Esmond Edwards
Notes edited by Peter Keepnews
Special thanks to Cary Anning, Hiroshi Aono, Alice Coltrane, Michelle Coltrane, Ravi Coltrane, Elaine Crowther,
Michel Delorme, Yasuhiro Fujioka, Nathan Graves, Regina Joskow-Dunton, Bill Kaplan, Jamie Krents,
Erick Labson, Marc Lipiner, Chris Morris, Wolf Schmaler, Takeshi Uno, and Jeff Willens
Check out our full catalog complete with soundclips and sign up today for free downloads, newsletters, artist
updates, videos, contests, and more at: www.impulserecords.com
2003 The Verve Music Group, a Division of UMG Recordings, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. B0000610-02
John Coltrane saw the album-length suite A Love Supreme
as his gift to God. The world has come to see it as a classic
not only Coltranes best known work, but one of the most
important and influential jazz records ever made.
1>Part 1 Acknowledgement 7:43
2>Part 2 Resolution 7:20
3>Part 3 Pursuance / 4>Part 4 Psalm 10:42/ 7:05
John Coltrane (tenor saxophone); McCoy Tyner (piano);
Jimmy Garrison (bass); Elvin Jones (drums).
Recorded December 1964 at Van Gelder Recording Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Original recordings produced by Bob Thiele
Original recordings engineered by Rudy Van Gelder
Original-LP cover photograph by Bob Thiele
visit us at www.impulserecords.com
2003 The Verve Music Group, a Division of UMG Recordings, Inc. Distributed by Universal Music & Video Distribution Corp.,
100 Universal City Plaza, 4th Floor, Universal City, California 91608. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction, hiring,
lending, public performance, and broadcasting prohibited. Printed in the USA.

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