A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album [Mass Market Paperback]

Ashley Kahn (Author), Elvin Jones (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 28, 2003

Few albums in the canon of popular music have had the influence, resonance, and endurance of John Coltrane's 1965 classic A Love Supreme-a record that proved jazz was a fitting medium for spiritual exploration and for the expression of the sublime. Bringing the same fresh and engaging approach that characterized his critically acclaimed Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, Ashley Kahn tells the story of the genesis, creation, and aftermath of this classic recording. Featuring interviews with more than one hundred musicians, producers, friends, and family members; unpublished interviews with Coltrane and bassist Jimmy Garrison; and scores of never-before-seen photographs, A Love Supreme balances biography, cultural context, and musical analysis in a passionate and revealing portrait.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Along with Miles Davis's seminal album, Kind of Blue, saxophonist John Coltrane's A Love Supreme is undoubtedly one of the world's most influential jazz recordings. Recorded with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones over the course of one evening in 1964, the record "caught Coltrane at a pivotal point in his creative trajectory: the crystallizing of his four years with this renowned quartet, moments before his turn toward the final, most debated phase of his career." In A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album, Ashley Kahn (Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece) covers how the album was made, where it was made, why it is so important and how it reached such a broad audience (it is one of the top-selling jazz albums of all time). Music fans and historians will devour the book, which is rife with anecdotes and commentary from Bono, Phil Lesh, Alice Coltrane (Coltrane's widow); black-and-white photographs; and previously unpublished interviews with Coltrane himself. It features a foreword written by Elvin Jones.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Jazz writing appears to be moving toward high art, with Kahn leading the way. In his second study of a groundbreaking jazz recording (the first was on Miles Davis's Kind of Blue), he addresses the less obvious aspects of Coltrane's album, including the saxophonist's ideas and the actual recording session, interweaving them all with snippets of interviews with the Coltrane family and musical cohorts. Five brief sections, or interludes, discuss topics like the label that released the record (Impulse), the producer, and related poetry, while the epilog concisely summarizes the text. A Love Supreme, Kahn reveals, was a spiritual manifesto that touched countless listeners. Many issues come to the fore: the cultural movements of the mid-1960s, including expression of spiritual values, and technical musical challenges. Coltrane fulfilled his desire to record in one finite session without regard to commercial pressures. He was able to pull together much of his previous work and concentrate it in one piece. The only book-length treatment of the record, this is absolutely essential jazz history for all libraries. [This book's publication coincides with the Verve Music Group's release of an expanded, two-disc version of A Love Supreme.-Ed.]-William G. Kenz, Minnesota State Univ., Moorhea.
--William G. Kenz, Minnesota State Univ., Moorhead
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142003522
• ISBN-13: 978-0142003527
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #456,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars love it, March 20, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album (Hardcover)

I loved this book. In fact I was just ordering a few extra copies to give as gifts to serious jazz connoisseurs when I came across this drivel from Rich Fontana in the customer reviews section. I felt that as a fan of both the album and the book, I am compelled to reply to his assiduously prepared critique.

In taking the author to task for being a fan, he misses the point of the book entirely: it is intended as a passionate celebration as much as carefully researched study. The author admits it unabashedly, Coltrane himself stated that an "emotional reaction" to music was paramount (in a '64 interview with Leonard Feather) and how else can one measure the effect and influence of a spiritual album without engaging the emotional?

As stated clearly by the author, and Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner - A Love Supreme was indeed a culmination of the quartet's three years together, not a culmination of Coltrane's career. Yes, Crescent was important and the author states that, even proposing it as an effective blueprint for the four-part suite that ALS is. Mr. Fontana's argument that his own perspective on Crescent is significantly different from the author's goes so far into the realm of picayune that - if it were deemed important enough to be published -- the vast majority of readers would end up scratching their heads and closing the book. (And while on the subject of hair-splitting, Crescent was recorded and released in 1964 - not 1963 - as Mr. Fontana maintains, an important matter in the hyper-charged Trane timeline.)

As to Kahn's use (another small matter apparently missed by someone who relishes detail: the author's name is K-A-H-N) of rock n' rollers (and minimalists, and world musicians) in gauging the reach and influence of ALS. One of the primary intentions of the book is OBVIOUSLY to show how Coltrane managed to transcend stylistic and categorical boundaries - and still does. In the same way the old Blindfold interviews in Down Beat - in which say, Coltrane would praise Lester Young, leading certain fans to ferret out and enjoy old Count Basie recordings - today's far-flung media allows a Carlos Santana oreven the dreaded Bono to help point their fans to the music of Coltrane

In the end, Mr. Fontana comes across as one who requires his music writing the same way: dry, analytical, single-minded. Jazz - and music in general - is NOT rocket science and should not be left to the cold, hard interpretation of one person (such as Mr. Fontana's own, opinion-as-fact portrayal of Coltrane's musical path.) In the virtual round-table Kahn has produced in this book, there is life and passion (and a helluva lot of great photographic images), powered by his own perceptions but mostly by the input of others: jazz musicians, jazz fans, even regular (G-d forbid -- non-jazz) listeners. He trusts his reader to figure it all out for him or herself, that somewhere among all those voices sits the general truth of music, Coltrane and A Love Supreme.

I applaud Ashley Kahn for making a very readable, authoritative book that exudes love and respect for its subject. This kind of writing will do more to breathe life into the jazz continuum than the boring tomes that more often pass for jazz writing. I can't wait to see what Kahn comes up with next.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect Gift for Jazz Lover, December 4, 2002

By 

Debbie Rose (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album (Hardcover)

A gorgeous book, it gracefully fuses art and literature into a beautiful form with a most compelling story. Any jazz fan will appreciate the depth of the writers research into the making of this historical album and into the mind of the master. The interviews are fresh and fascinating, the photos sublime. One of the best music books I've read in years.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Homage or Adulation?, October 13, 2005

By 

matthewslaughter "matthewslaughter" (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album (Mass Market Paperback)

Kahn's stellar research for this volume on Coltrane's best known album, "A Love Supreme," is undermined by sloppy prose and lack of focus. Kahn does a great job showing just how powerful the album has been for generations of listeners, from Wayne Shorter to Bono. The biographical material on Coltrane is very good, but profoundly impersonal, skipping over key aspects of his life. The best part of the book is his meticulous documentation of the December 9 & 10, 1964 sessions that resulted in this album. Kahn describes the music with vivid language, and includes details about where Elvin Jones' drums were placed and how Rudy Van Gelder lit the studio to create a Jazz Club atmosphere for the performers. After that, Kahn's book loses focus. It's as if he had a 100 page manuscript, but then the folks at Penguin asked him to make it 250, and he had scratch around for any extra material he could find. His assessment of Coltrane's career post-"A Love Supreme" is very tepid, and the chapter on the legacy of the recording, especially from the vantagepoint of JOWCOL publishing, shows promise, but ultimately goes nowhere. Kahn's major problem here is that he doesn't know who his audience is. Is it for die-hard Trane-iacs, or is it for the casual listener that has "A Love Supreme" and no other Coltrane album? Some of this might not be Kahn's fault, as the content suggests this is for experts, but the formating of the book, with its wide margins and coffee-table book size, make it seem as if it's simply for show and tell in some bourgeois apartment. The book could have been better organized, more historically contextual, and filled with glossaries and footnotes for the more casual fans. Also, Kahn's lack of historical grounding makes it seem as though "A Love Supreme" was the only album released in 1965, and that jazz was the most popular music at that time, which is far from the case (just as it is today). Here, his homage to this wonderful album bleeds over into the realm of adulation. If this was a book for the "experts," it would be more critical of the album, instead of an all-out gush-fest. But Kahn's research must be commended (especially since he seems to be responsible for getting the December 10th performance of "Acknowledgment," with Davis and Shepp as added musicians, unearthed and onto the Deluxe Edition reissue of "A Love Supreme).