#6 - John Coltrane, A Love Supreme
Release Year: 1965
Genre: Avante-Garde Jazz
How much do I like my favorite track on the album? 13.6 points
Part III - Pursuance
Pursuance leads with a fast and driving drum solo. It’s fast moving. Just listen to this and close your eyes. Transport yourself into another world. Real quick. My eyes actually twitch a little on this and it's a joyous reflex.
How did/does this album influence my own taste in music overall? 14.4 points
John Coltrane heavily influenced my perception of music as a whole. And - maybe - my interest in playing Tenor Sax. Avante-Garde as a genre isn’t exactly for the faint of heart either. The gateway to weird.
Does this album hold up since its release? 14.4 points
This is a classic if you are building out an album collection. If you were to select just one jazz record, you could pick this and make most people happy.
What percentage of the album do I listen to? 10 points
This album is really just one extended symphony of greatness. Please never skip a track on it.
What did/do the critics think of this album? 9 points
Critics love love LOVE John Coltrane. There are some minor criticisms, as I will discuss later, that it is perhaps too heady for the average listener. But that’s also what I appreciate about Coltrane - he made music for him.
What is the sentimental value to me of the album? 12.8 points
Fairly low on the sentimentality rating here. I obviously quite enjoy it, but it is a very mood specific album.
What was the artists involvement of the production of the album - songwriting, instrumentals, vocals, uniqueness? 16 points
The 2nd of 3 perfect scores in my top 25 is given…no…earned by A Love Supreme. It is over zealous, entirely a creature birthed from a mind that only the likes of John Coltrane could produce. It’s 33 minutes of perfection, and as mentioned earlier, perhaps better compared to a symphony than other jazz repertoire.
Overall Rating out of 100 points = 90.2 points
This is the sole instrumental album to make my list. There’s something driving yet utterly peaceful in this whole album. It is John Coltrane’s greatest work, and perhaps the greatest jazz album of all time. Yeah, I said it. Because there’s really only two camps when it comes time to discuss which Jazz album towers above the rest. You’re either in camp Kind of Blue or camp A Love Supreme. While there is nothing wrong with Kind of Blue, and in fact, John Coltrane is on that album as well, it’s just so much more overtly simplistic. And while there’s a time and a place for that, I am just drawn so much more to the ethereal complexities present on A Love Supreme. I was reading some notes on the album, and it was summed up by someone as “perfect for hippies, probably pretentious for anyone else.” At first I’m a little taken aback by this, but it kind of makes sense. Jazz does often feel pretentious or get that moniker from people who don’t like it, don’t listen to it, and/or don’t understand it. As far as jazz albums go, this one actually is quite approachable, consistently exciting and filled with squealing runs and riffs from the greatest Tenor Saxophone player of all time. The whole theme of the album is a hymn of intentional praise. I personally don’t feel that when I listen to it, and that doesn’t really matter. The supporting cast is simple (bass, piano, and drums) and helps drive the piece as a whole forward. It’s in my humble opinion, an entirely ambitious, no breaks given or taken, piece of avante-garde. Grandios and vexing, just as it was intended to be. Yet another musician gone far too soon, what could have been, we will never know.
