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A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album Paperback – October 28, 2003

by Ashley Kahn (Author), Elvin Jones (Contributor)
4.6 out of 5 stars 189
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Few albums in the canon of popular music have had the influence, resonance, and endurance of John Coltrane's 1965 classic A Love Supreme-a record that proved jazz was a fitting medium for spiritual exploration and for the expression of the sublime. Bringing the same fresh and engaging approach that characterized his critically acclaimed Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, Ashley Kahn tells the story of the genesis, creation, and aftermath of this classic recording. Featuring interviews with more than one hundred musicians, producers, friends, and family members; unpublished interviews with Coltrane and bassist Jimmy Garrison; and scores of never-before-seen photographs, A Love Supreme balances biography, cultural context, and musical analysis in a passionate and revealing portrait.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    288 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    October 28, 2003
  4. Dimensions
    7.5 x 0.72 x 9.13 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0142003522
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0142003527
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The emotions I experienced while reading Ashley Kahn's A Love Supreme gave me a feeling of beauty, elegance, excellence, grace and dignity. I congratulate him for a supreme effort well done." (Carlos Santana)

About the Author

Ashley Kahn is the author of critically acclaimed Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece; the primary editor of Rolling Stone: The Seventies, and a primary contributor to The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide. His freelance features on music and culture have appeared in the New York Times, TV Guide, MOJO, Newsday, The New York Observer, New Statesman (UK), Jazz (France), GQ (Japan), Down Beat, Jazz Times and many other publications. He was music editor at VH1, and has also been a concert producer and tour manager, working with a wide variety of artists from Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and Britney Spears, to Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Cassandra Wilson and Debby Harry and the Jazz Passengers.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Publishing Group; First Edition (October 28, 2003)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0142003522
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0142003527
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 0.72 x 9.13 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 189

About the author

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Ashley Kahn

Ashley Kahn

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Ashley Kahn is a Grammy-winning music historian, author and producer, a wearer of hats, is wary of autocrats, loves jazz but is allergic to cats. He co-wrote Carlos Santana’s autobiography The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light, and has written titles on legendary recordings Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, and a record label: The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records. His most recent book, George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters was published in August 2020. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
189 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

fff3k
5.0 out of 5 stars A Deep Dive into a Classic Album
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2023
Verified Purchase
This is a good read, covering as much ground as anyone could possibly cover, about an album that never diminishes in importance.

There is good background in advance of the recording, and then... great detail about the recording, and the performance itself. But the book is never over-bearing, and held my interest throughout.

Nothing really matters but the music, but it's eye-opening to learn something about the music-makers, the process... and the incredible response to the beautiful sounds Coltrane and company made. So I am glad a friend mentioned the book, and recommend it to anyone who wants to get further inside "A Love Supreme".
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Tom Walsh
5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazingly Thorough Biography of an Album
Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2020
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I am always suspicious of critiques of any piece of art, be it Painting, Literature or Music, that parse every stroke or phrase for hidden meanings or events from the Artists childhood that infuse the work.

This book is different. Kahn is so devoted to Coltrane and to this work in particular that he appreciates every note, every chord and every studio moment that John brings to A Love Supreme and every other day in the life and brief career of this Jazz Giant. He does this respectfully but not with the eyes of a worshipper but rather a realistic fan of Jazz and the musicians who created it, warts and all.

The world of the Golden Age of Jazz, the late ‘50’s and ‘60’s, comes alive in the words and music of the Artists, Producers, Engineers that made it happen and their descendants still carrying the torch. It’s not always pretty, often peopled with drug addicts, drunks and troubled men, but it comes across as real and the music it gave rise to as real and important.

I have to admit: this is My Music. No other before or since resonates with me as deeply. So I appreciated Kahn’s phrase by phrase analysis of the Piece. Every chord, note, drum beat is described with the context that shaped it. And his words are backed up by the musicians themselves, their fans, followers and critics, so it’s not just one man’s opinion.

This analysis is not painful to endure. I punctuated each description with listening to the recording and following along, as well as a layman could, making the experience of sound and printed word even more enjoyable. I recommend this approach to any future reader. But, however you do it, if you like Coltrane’s Music and well written biography, I heartily recommend this Five Star book.
5 people found this helpful
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Muhammed Al-Ahari
5.0 out of 5 stars Ontime and in condition noted.
Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2022
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Great piece of Jazz history. Came in time and condition advertized.
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Robert B Elwell
4.0 out of 5 stars Well-Meaning, Incomplete, Overexhaustive
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2016
Verified Purchase
What I was really looking for in this book was the story arc that I think A Love Supreme itself clearly narrates: a troubled, talented person's spiritual journey to understand the world and disseminate the wisdom he acquires through suffering. Instead, I found the overall product to be a little academic, dry, and prone to uninteresting tangents.

A particular footnote underscores this by including a paragraph on a contentious Yahoo! Groups thread over "tracing the history of jazz musicians writing their own liner notes". I think everyone in that thread would love every bit of this book I found unnecessary.

I've recently read books on Miles and Trane's work together culminating in Kind of Blue, as well as the life of Thelonious Monk. I would rate it between these two (with the first being the best), and similarly removed from its associated source material due to its academic angle.

Maybe the best part of this book, however, is the detailed treatment of Rudy Van Gelder, whose body of work as a recording engineer has recently been celebrated as a result of his passing. It would be great to see a whole book on RVG, and I actually think an academic approach would be most suitable given his varied and technical contributions to both music production in the mid 20th Century and the interpretation of Jazz as a result of those available technologies and their implementations.

Another commendation I will give the author is that the sections that actually describe the recording of the tracks on the album can be read at roughly the same speed as the tracks themselves, which really enhanced the experience. I usually find it hard to appreciate descriptions of instrumental songs without listening to them or having just recently listened to them, so these passages were a treat.

As the somewhat unnecessarily large section detailing covers of songs on A Love Supreme intimates, tackling this almost liturgical work by Coltrane in any format is a near insurmountable task. Like many interviewees who have recorded such covers, the author seems to have taken it on respectfully and with gratitude, knowing it would be impossible to fully do justice to the source material.
2 people found this helpful
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Devi San Martin
5.0 out of 5 stars Great investigation book, great details on history
Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2021
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Amazing book about a great, may be the greatest sax player, more than a player, a composer (that's about the book) band leader, an spiritual centered not fanatic man.
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PeopleInSorrow
5.0 out of 5 stars Great biography around a masterpiece
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2013
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The book talks about the path that John Coltrane before and after the great masterpiece "A Love Supreme". It presents a clear picture of what Coltrane was thinking around that time using plenty of interviews (McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Dave Liebman, Michael Brecker, Branford Marsalis, etc.). Simply reading the words from those interviews is fun.
3 people found this helpful
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American Lion
5.0 out of 5 stars Probably the best....
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2015
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Easily the best biography of Coltrane. Although it's primary focus is the seminal album, it gives an excellent review of Coltrane's entire life leading up to the classic. It gives abundant and perhaps unparalleled quotes from Coltrane and the members of his Classic Quartet. Highly recommended.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Jedd
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books on the subject
Reviewed in Canada on February 5, 2017
Verified Purchase
A very in depth analysis of one of Jazz greatest albums and quartet. Detailed but easily accessible to casual fans and has enough meat to satisfy hardcore jazzoids alike. The photos are welcomed and so are Coltrane's notes etc. I also enjoyed the format of the book in that the interviews were typed in bold. The side notes about Creed Taylor and Rudy Van Gelder were also a welcomed surprise. The one small nit pick I have with this book is that on some pages the type was blurred or overlapping badly. This could be just the book I received and really has more to do with printing than anything else. If you can look at a physical copy before you buy, I would suggest it. A solid 5 star book!
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ABR
5.0 out of 5 stars A worthy book and wonderful story.
Reviewed in Germany on July 14, 2015
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A very entertaining and informative book that makes listening to "A Love Supreme" that much more enjoyable. I highly recommend this book to everyone who appreciates this brilliant piece of music from John Coltrane.
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