John Coltrane: A Love Supreme

This is the first copy of Love Supreme I bought, 20 years after it was released and 20 years before I got the expanded deluxe CD version and book of the album.

I was imagining I'd got the original vinyl on the strength of reading about it in Jazz Masters of the 50s. When I came to look up what the book said about it, I found that it didn't say anything — or about Ascension either — for fairly obvious reasons. The clue's in the title of the book, and it was published in 1965, the same year that A Love Supreme (and I) were released. In fact the profile of Coltrane in the book seems a little ambivalent about him, and says at one point that much of Trane's best work is to be found as a sideman on Miles Davis records. I'm arguing with that — hardly an expert myself — but it shows the fifties emphasis.

So it was something else, more intuitive, that drew me to this record. I reckon it was

• me being a sucker for albums conceived as a whole/concept albums
• the neat formal symmetry (two sides, two parts on each, a narrative arc ending with a dedication
• the cosmic spirituality
• Coltrane's image, both the specific one on the cover, and his general cool
• Bono citing it as an influence.

That context and that backstory led the younger me here instead of to Crescent, or indeed to Gerry Mulligan, who gets more unequivocal praise in Jazz Masters of the 50s.

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