THE ALBUM NOBODY WANTED TO RELEASE
On December 9, 1964, John Coltrane walked into Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey with his quartet and recorded what would become the most important jazz album of the second half of the twentieth century.
They did it in one afternoon.
The label did not know what to do with it.
Impulse! Records had signed Coltrane in 1961 specifically to make commercially viable records. Jazz was changing. Rock and roll was eating the market. Impulse! needed product that could compete. What Coltrane handed them instead was A Love Supreme — a four-part suite dedicated to God, with a poem in the liner notes and music that sounded nothing like anything on radio.
The album was split into four movements: Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance, Psalm. Each one building on the last. The final movement, Psalm, was Coltrane playing the melody of the liner notes poem on his saxophone — a prayer converted directly into music. He had written out the poem and then played the words. People who did not know this listened to Psalm and felt like they were hearing something sacred without knowing why. That was because they were.
The label hesitated. Critics were split. Some understood immediately what they were hearing. Others filed it under difficult.
The public disagreed with both groups.
A Love Supreme sold 500,000 copies in its first year. It has sold close to a million since. It sits on nearly every serious list of the greatest recordings ever made and belongs on all of them.
What Coltrane proved that afternoon in New Jersey was something the music business has never fully accepted: that the most commercially successful thing you can do is also usually the most honest thing. He was not trying to sell records. He was trying to make something true. The records sold because people can feel the difference.
They always can.
WHAT TO LISTEN TO
A Love Supreme (1965). Start at the beginning and do not stop. Thirty three minutes. No skipping. If you have been putting this one off, today is the day.
THE MUSIC
If the history is what brings you here, the music is what keeps you here.
Stream or buy my latest at sidkingsley.com
Until next time.
Sid