A Love Supreme
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A Love Supreme (1965) is a record album by John Coltrane's quartet. The album is a four-part suite, broken up into tracks: Acknowledgement (which contains the famous mantra that gave the suite its name), Resolution, Pursuance and Psalm.
It is intended to be a spiritual album, broadly representative of a personal struggle for purity. The final track corresponds to the wording of a devotional poem Coltrane included in the liner notes.
Adaptations
Doug Carn and wife Jean Carn did a cover of "Acknowledgement" featuring vocals by Jean. This was featured on the album Infant Eyes in 1972. John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana recorded a guitar version of "Acknowledgement," which they titled as "A Love Supreme" on their 1973 collaboration Love Devotion Surrender. At the time, both were devotees of guru Sri Chinmoy.
Will Downing released an R&B cover version of the main theme, with the co-operation of John's widow Alice Coltrane, which reached number fourteen in the UK singles chart in 1988. Gumball recorded a rock/alternative/jazz version of A Love Supreme and was a bonus track on the Japanese release of the 1994 release Revolution On Ice. The suite also forms four tracks on the 2002 Branford Marsalis Quartet album entitled Footsteps of our Fathers, and another Marsalis version is on a DVD "A Love Supreme Live in Amsterdam". Branford's brother Wynton recorded the suite in 2003 with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.
Sections of the suite have been performed by the David Murray Octet, the Ballistic Brothers, and the Bob Mintzer Big Band. Turtle Island String Quartet released their album A Love Supreme in 2007, and the album features a cover version of the suite, along with other covers of various Coltrane charts.
A 1995 album titled Variations on A Love Supreme was composed by Fabrizio Cassol and Kris Defoort.
José James re-recorded two tracks in 2007 from A Love Supreme as a double A-Side limited-edition 10" for Brownswood Records which was available at concerts and by mail order. "Equinox" and "Resolution" were the tracks in question. James, previously a young rapper, added vocals to the tracks in a style reminiscent to some of Gil Scott Heron. Jazz vocalist Kurt Elling recorded a cover of "Resolution" for his album Man in the Air. In this recording, Elling set lyrics to the song in his signature style, vocalese.
