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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
61 of 62 people found the following review helpful
By baldheadtim
Format:Audio CD
To those of you who perhaps bought this album on Vinyl in the 60s as I did, and have been so disappointed with all the CD re-issues to date, then finally your patience has been rewarded.
All previous CD reissues have had a nasty tinny quality to Elvin Jones's cymbal sound, and Coltrane's tenor sounded hard and ugly. Even the Impulse 24 bit remaster was horrible.
This re-issue is gorgeous -- even if you own this recording, unless it is on anything other than pristine vinyl :-), it is well worth a re-purchase.
The bonus is that the live French recording (the only time Love Supreme was played as a suite live) is both sufficiently different and exciting to sometimes make the choice of which version to listen to a problem.
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
By John Tree
Format:Audio CD
OK, it's 1964, and Bebop has come a long way. We are six years after Coltrane recorded Kind of Blue with Miles, and it would be another five years before Miles records the next milestone: In A Silent Way. Tunes seem to be getting longer and longer...and with A Love Supreme John Coltrane finally produces a recording that gives himself free rein to really explore the furthest recesses from seed ideas. This is a very spiritual album, there seem to be no constraints.
Most of the four tunes begin with a basic theme, which is quickly jettisoned as Coltrane's creative juices start to flow.
There are some astounding sections on this CD, the musicians almost seem to be jostling for position at the mic, and yet they meld organically together. There are calm, meditative sections where we feel the gentle ebb and flow of notes between the players. There are parts where Coltrane's sax just 'goes' and blasts out a barrage of notes that are like a musical tsunami. We have emotive swells from McCoy Tyner's angular piano stabs elevating and pushing. Jimmy Garrison's nagging bass manages to add both urgency and solidity. There is some excellent effervescent and elastic drumming from the great Elvin Jones who manages the trick of creating and maintaining endless dynamic openings.
I have lost count how many times I have played this album over the years, but it still sounds fresh and new. The recording is Coltrane at the height of his powers, and the whole album boils over with invention. It may sound like a cliche, but it really does feel like a kind of spiritual roller coaster... immersive, visceral and exhilarating. Wow.
Most of the four tunes begin with a basic theme, which is quickly jettisoned as Coltrane's creative juices start to flow.
There are some astounding sections on this CD, the musicians almost seem to be jostling for position at the mic, and yet they meld organically together. There are calm, meditative sections where we feel the gentle ebb and flow of notes between the players. There are parts where Coltrane's sax just 'goes' and blasts out a barrage of notes that are like a musical tsunami. We have emotive swells from McCoy Tyner's angular piano stabs elevating and pushing. Jimmy Garrison's nagging bass manages to add both urgency and solidity. There is some excellent effervescent and elastic drumming from the great Elvin Jones who manages the trick of creating and maintaining endless dynamic openings.
I have lost count how many times I have played this album over the years, but it still sounds fresh and new. The recording is Coltrane at the height of his powers, and the whole album boils over with invention. It may sound like a cliche, but it really does feel like a kind of spiritual roller coaster... immersive, visceral and exhilarating. Wow.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Coltrane's high water mark of spiritual searching, where `sheets of sound' and esoteric musicality merge with the spirit of the 60's beat/hippy influenced quest for inner knowledge, both free and yet beautifully structured.
As a drummer I've always enjoyed this album as much for the interaction of the sublime rhythm section as for Coltrane's own kaleidoscopic psychedelic explosiveness. I also love the endearingly off-key mumbling of the vocal refrain "A Love Supreme". Elvin Jones is just incredible, as are Jimmy Garrison and McCoy Tyner (I saw Tyner in the early 90's in Cambridge, and he was still ploughing the furrow first broken by this band way back in the mid-sixties, and even then - as now - it sounded fresh, vigourous, vital, transformative, exciting).
Jazz isn't dead, it's there in the ether, waiting for you to connect with it (funny, how so much jazz went hand in hand with 'connections' of other kinds too). Coltrane and co really connect on this monumental recording, making this essential music, 'nuff said!
As a drummer I've always enjoyed this album as much for the interaction of the sublime rhythm section as for Coltrane's own kaleidoscopic psychedelic explosiveness. I also love the endearingly off-key mumbling of the vocal refrain "A Love Supreme". Elvin Jones is just incredible, as are Jimmy Garrison and McCoy Tyner (I saw Tyner in the early 90's in Cambridge, and he was still ploughing the furrow first broken by this band way back in the mid-sixties, and even then - as now - it sounded fresh, vigourous, vital, transformative, exciting).
Jazz isn't dead, it's there in the ether, waiting for you to connect with it (funny, how so much jazz went hand in hand with 'connections' of other kinds too). Coltrane and co really connect on this monumental recording, making this essential music, 'nuff said!
38 of 40 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful and moving- one of the greatest achievements in music history
5 Oct 2006
By The Fish
Format:Audio CD
This album is often coupled with Miles Davis' Kind of Blue as one of the greatest undertakings in jazz history. The two albums have been jostling for superiority ever since they were rightly recognised as classics. While Kind of Blue has a understated elegance years beyond its time, it misses something that Coltrane's masterwork has in abundance- love.
My overriding experience of Kind of Blue is that it is probably the biggest "grower-onner" in music history; an album that just gets better and better and better. A Love Supreme however, captivated me from the outset. The bold opening tells us we are in for something special and it doesn't lie. The album just continues to soar, never letting up, never dropping.
Coltrane's suite was made with so much love that it if you don't fall for it straight away, there is probably something wrong with your CD player. I put it up there with Michaelagelo's sistine chapel, Wagner's Ring, and Kubrick's 2001 as one of the greatest artistic achievements in history.
So, when you feel like there is no love in the world, just stick this on nice and loud- awesome.
Man, I take music way too seriously.....
My overriding experience of Kind of Blue is that it is probably the biggest "grower-onner" in music history; an album that just gets better and better and better. A Love Supreme however, captivated me from the outset. The bold opening tells us we are in for something special and it doesn't lie. The album just continues to soar, never letting up, never dropping.
Coltrane's suite was made with so much love that it if you don't fall for it straight away, there is probably something wrong with your CD player. I put it up there with Michaelagelo's sistine chapel, Wagner's Ring, and Kubrick's 2001 as one of the greatest artistic achievements in history.
So, when you feel like there is no love in the world, just stick this on nice and loud- awesome.
Man, I take music way too seriously.....
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
By Simon Barrow
Format:Audio CD
What can be said of Coltrane's transcendent 'A Love Supreme' that hasn't already been spoken or written? A great deal, I'm sure. But first you have to enter its extraordinary sound world. That is by far the most important thing: to take the suite on its terms, and to be prepared to alter your expectations and presuppositions accordingly. For, as Robert Fripp would put it, it is a music that invites you into its presence. It is there way before you are. And its transformation of jazz is still not finished.
As most reading this will know, the studio version is tracked by a full live rendition (issued independently on CD in 2000) from the Antibes jazz festival 1965. You need to check that out too, and the remastered Impulse recordings -- based on new master tapes released in October 2002 -- are perhaps the best place to begin. But you might be intrigued by this, dense compressed version, which is all we had from the studio until more recently.
Wherever you start, 'A Love Supreme' still retains the capacity to surprise, entice and delight even the most over-taxed ears; surely a true testimony to its greatness. Winnowing sax, uncomplicated melodic sophistication, subtle modal delights, percussive ingenuity (not just from the drummer) and a spirit of blazing but well-tempered spiritual passion make these inter-twining tracks what they are: wholly entrancing.
To add to the delight of discovery there is also a new book which helps to fill in the background to the album, the era that witnessed its birth and the creative force behind it. ‘A Love Supreme: The Creation of John Coltrane’s Classic Album’ by Ashley Kahn (Granta Books 2002 (ISBN: 186207545X), has a Foreword by percussion legend Elvin Jones. It is full of information and insight, of course.
... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
scratched disc
I know this piece of music and looked forward to playing it. Looking at the disc I was incredulous to see the scoring and scratching. Read more
Published 18 days ago by Isobel Newbigging
5.0 out of 5 stars
"A WORK OF ART"
"A Love Supreme" is a superb record. I see it more as a work of art or a piece of art rather than just music. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Warren
3.0 out of 5 stars
a little disappointed!
Cam just as i expected but in my opinion it is a little over rated but obviously this is to my tastes
Published 2 months ago by MR J E EVANS
4.0 out of 5 stars
I've eaten better!
This album blew my mind, man. Not as good as the chicken supreme I had for my tea last night but man it sounded good. Mmmmmmmm I love chicken and I love supreme!
Published 3 months ago by AndySoprano
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great Music. Poor Sound
This is a must have item for jazz fans - though in my view not Coltranes greatest work, though probably his best known. Read more
Published 5 months ago by johval
5.0 out of 5 stars
My first Coltrane
Mr Kim Tait, a saxophonist, muso/artist and friend argued that Coltrane was the greates saxophonist to draw breath. Read more
Published 11 months ago by "Belgo Geordie"
4.0 out of 5 stars
Jazzy
I am not a jazz eficionado <<<spellcheck but I know what I like and I like this.
the music themes are interesting and the improvisation is really quirky and can be... Read more
the music themes are interesting and the improvisation is really quirky and can be... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Cubby Kovu
1.0 out of 5 stars
Be more careful
Sadly the cd is in a format that i cannot play. It wasn't obvious that this was a SACD ( what ever that is )
Published 15 months ago by JG
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sublime Masterpiece
John Coltrane's 1964-recorded masterpiece A Love Supreme is, for me, one of the most beautiful, and simple, musical performances ever recorded. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Keith M
5.0 out of 5 stars
Trane`s prayer
Even at his most `out there` John Coltrane sounded as if he had something beyond the confines of genre to impart, bursting as he was with, so colleague Miles Davis pointedly... Read more
Published 17 months ago by GlynLuke
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