By Bernie Brink

This month marks the 60^th anniversary of a landmark John Coltrane recording, his album-length suite, A Love Supreme.  Arguably Coltrane’s greatest album, A Love Supreme was hailed by contemporary critics as one of the most important jazz albums of the decade and has since outsold most of his other recordings.  Today, it is widely regarded not only as one of Trane’s most important records, but it consistently ranks among the greatest albums of all time.

The album’s spiritual connotations are clear: it is one man’s offering of gratitude to a power greater than himself.  However, Coltrane was never explicit about the religious connections or spiritual meaning of the music, so there is some ambiguity behind the titles of the individual movements, “Acknowledgement,” “Resolution,” “Pursuance,” and “Psalm.”  Whatever their meanings, they may also be interpreted to have less obvious, real-world significance in how they serve as a kind of short hand for Coltrane’s spiritual journey and artistic development of the preceding decade.

In 1957, after years of drug use and battling addiction, Coltrane finally had to “acknowledge” the severity and root of his problem when he was fired from the Miles Davis Quintet.  On the heels of that event, he “resolved” to dedicate his life to music and began recording prolifically in the aftermath of that event, appearing on more than a dozen sessions that year alone.  He spent much of 1957 under the tutelage of Thelonious Monk in the Monk quartet before “pursuing” his own sound and ideas with albums like Giant Steps and his classic quartet.  The “Psalm” is both the closing of the suite and serves as a parable for his arrival at a certain spiritual state.

This month, we are celebrating A Love Supreme with a close look at the events and music that led to the genesis of this remarkable work.  Tune in Sundays at 5:00 p.m. for Off the Record with Bernie Brink, and Fridays at 5:00 p.m. for The Coltrane Matrix with Duane Johnson.