Like a mass by J.S. Bach — but set to surging jazz rhythms and searing blues melodies — John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” still sings to the ages, 40 years after it was created.
Revered wherever jazz is spoken, recorded (at least in part) by no less than Wynton Marsalis and Carlos Santana with John McLaughlin, praised by critics, dissected by scholars, rehearsed by young tenor saxophonists who dream of greatness, the indelible recording long since has earned a sacred place in American culture.
So much, in fact, that musicians often hesitate when asked to perform this music publicly, for fear of presuming to step into the shadow of a jazz deity who addressed life and afterlife, man and God, in an oft-shattering recording.
Yet in a little more than a week, a brave — or perhaps foolhardy — musician will step fully into John Coltrane’s most sanctified realm, offering his own “Reflections on `A Love Supreme”‘ during the forthcoming Chicago Jazz Festival.
The young man’s reservations about this journey run deeper than they might for anyone else taking on such a mighty task, for he is a son of John Coltrane and has spent most of his still nascent career avoiding the very comparisons he is about to invoke.
“It’s difficult for me on some levels, such as ethically, and I know that’s a strong word,” says 39-year-old Ravi Coltrane, who has earned a formidable reputation as saxophonist-bandleader in his own right, without tapping into the artistic legacy of his surname.
“I don’t like to go around with a `John Coltrane son’ banner,” he says. “I’ve been in New York for over 10 years, trying to be me, a guy who loves and respects the music that came before me.
“My father’s music, of course, is more important to me than words can speak, but I’ve never felt comfortable trying to be somebody else or somebody I wasn’t. . . . I’m never one to take advantage of a situation.”
True enough, as Ravi Coltrane’s growing discography attests. His charismatic work on last year’s “Mad 6” (Columbia) and his probing improvisations on “Moving Pictures” (RCA in 1998) underscore the substance and originality of his work.
Yet after Aug. 30, when he plays the world premiere of his “Reflections on `A Love Supreme'” at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park, he never again will be able to say he has steered clear of drawing explicitly on his father’s art.
More important, he effectively will be striking a direct parallel between his father’s music and his own, between a landmark jazz recording and a latter-day attempt to come to terms with it.
For John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” recorded in December 1964 and released a few months later, holds a stature in jazz — and in American high art — equivalent to, say, Beethoven’s epic “Missa Solemnis” or Mozart’s Requiem in European culture.
“`A Love Supreme’ was a testament — John’s testament to a higher power,” says pianist McCoy Tyner, the last musician living who played on the original release.
“His spiritual inclinations were very strong, which means he believed in something that is more powerful than any of us but is still in all of us.
“When we made that recording, it was as if we were saying, `We’re here now, we’re going to play, we’re going to praise You.”
Considering the volatile course of Coltrane’s life and career, “A Love Supreme” was at once inevitable and unexpected, as paradoxical as that may seem.
Defining moments
With two grandfathers who were preachers, a mother who served as a church pianist and a family immersed in the church in rural North Carolina, where John Coltrane was born, faith and fervent religious expression defined Coltrane’s life before he even realized it.
“In my early years, we went to church every Sunday and stuff like that,” he once said. “We were under the influence of my grandfather, he was the dominant cat in the family.”
But by the late 1940s, when Coltrane’s career was taking flight in trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie’s big band, the saxophonist got swept up in the narcotics addiction that consumed much of a generation of bebop geniuses. Several years later, in the mid-1950s, Miles Davis — fed up with Coltrane’s self-destructiveness — not only fired Coltrane but famously beat him, delivering blows to the head and gut. Even if the trumpeter’s rage may have said more about his own battles with drugs than his fury at Coltrane, there was no question the saxophonist, already famous from his recorded and concert work with Davis, had hit a nadir.
Whether those events prompted Coltrane to try to reclaim his life, there’s no question that shortly after leaving Davis’ ensemble he underwent a transformation that later would find voice, most dramatically, in “A Love Supreme.”
“During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life,” he wrote in his liner notes to “A Love Supreme” — the only such notes he ever penned.
“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.”
Though a spiritual intensity long had distinguished Coltrane’s work, it became more palpable in subsequent recordings, most notably “Crescent,” of 1964, with its passages of struggle, solemnity and devotion.
Set new standard
On the evening of Dec. 9, 1964, Coltrane and his band — later referred to as the “classic quartet” — strode into Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and, in one night, recorded a four-movement suite that set an exalted new standard for sacred jazz.
“Just about everything we had recorded with John already had those spiritual feelings, but this recording was much more important to him in specific terms of spirituality,” Tyner recalls.
“But I did not even know that this music was going to be a suite. I knew the pieces were tied together, but that’s all.
“He didn’t talk about it to us. He came in, we talked a little about the music, and we played.
“But as I was leaving, John was recording a [vocal] chant over a Jimmy Garrison bass line,” continues Tyner, referring to Coltrane’s haunting incantation of the phrase “A Love Supreme,” another device he never did on any recording, before or since.
“And then when I read the liner notes, when the record came out, I thought, `Ahh, that’s what he was trying to do.'”
The liner notes explicitly articulated what the music implied, through an original, 69-line poem that opens with the phrase, “I will do all I can to be worthy of Thee O Lord.” In addition, in a record-jacket letter to his listeners, Coltrane traced his road to redemption.
“As time and events moved on,” he wrote, “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.”
`Supreme’ expressions
Ultimately, though, Coltrane expressed his most visceral thoughts on God and faith — and his arduous journey toward them — in the sound and texture and sinew of “A Love Supreme.” The mystical quality of the opening “Acknowledgement” movement, the ferocity of his tenor saxophone solos on the aptly named “Resolution” section and the unmetered, free-flowing tenor exhortations of “Psalm” represent a colossal achievement in jazz.
For although sacred impulses have been as deeply entwined with the roots of the music as its more celebrated carnal facets, “A Love Supreme” brought unprecedented intellectual rigor and emotional force to jazz contemplations of the divine.
“There is a completeness and a depth to `A Love Supreme’ that is unlike any other,” says Ashley Kahn, author of the authoritative book “A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album” (Viking).
“On one level, you’ve got a guy who’s leading a jazz quartet trying to do what most composers of Western history have needed a choir and orchestra and soloist to do. Their approach was that if you’re going to do a piece on God, you need a grand scale.
“Coltrane’s attitude was: I’m going to do it with what I know — with me, my tenor, my voice and my band.
“The consistency and completeness of the whole is why `A Love Supreme’ resonates with so many people,” Kahn continues.
“There are so many doors through which you can enter it,” he adds, referring to its jazz syntax, its blues undercurrents, its unmistakable message of faith and hope.
Yet the Olympian stature of this music poses a daunting task for the composer’s son, who’s attempting for the first time to respond in depth to his father’s most celebrated album.
Ravi Coltrane has no direct memories of his father, who died in 1967, when Ravi was 2 and his father 40. But creating “Reflections on `A Love Supreme'” may have deepened his understanding of his father’s music and life. Specifically, it has made him realize how high an artistic plane his father achieved with “A Love Supreme,” and how far the world of jazz has evolved — or devolved — from that point.
The way the elder Coltrane made his epochal recording — on his own terms, as a profound expression of faith — “is unlike the process [of recording music] today,” says Ravi Coltrane.
“Now it’s all about: Who do you want on your record? Who’s popular now? The tunes can’t be too long, for radio, and you have to cut a few extra tracks for Japan.
“All these elements go into musicmaking today.”
“A Love Supreme,” by contrast, was “a very real statement, there’s no pretense in it at all, there’s no one trying to be slick or trying to be hip. No one was trying to get over to the critics or get radio play or all the stupid crap we have to do today.
“It’s a complete document for this man and this band, this collective ideal, this collective energy.”
Still at work on the new composition, Ravi Coltrane says he does not yet know how closely his piece will reflect the original, though his use of sextet suggests a significant departure.
He acknowledges that he has not yet told his mother, the pianist Alice Coltrane, about the venture, though he insists it’s not because he’s reluctant to.
How does he expect Coltrane’s widow to react?
“I think she’ll say, `Great,'” says Ravi Coltrane, who has performed segments of the music from “A Love Supreme” with his mother.
“And I think she’ll say, `Do something meaningful.'”
