The All-TIME 100 Albums: A Love Supreme by John Coltrane

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The All-TIME 100 Albums

94 of 101

By Alan Light Published: November 13, 2006

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ALBUM: A Love Supreme

YEAR RELEASED: 1964 LABEL: Impulse ARTIST: John Coltrane

TIME 100 ALBUMS PODCASTS

PODCAST: Welcome to the All-TIME 100 Albums - the musical compilations of the last half-century that need no introduction. That said, listen in below as music critics Josh Tyrangiel and Alan Light introduce the list and talk about the top albums of the 1950s and '60s.

PODCAST: We know. Twenty-nine of the 100 greatest albums of all time come in the 1970s, and Pink Floyd isn't there. Play this podcast to learn why we picked the titles we did, and if you have something to say, tell us about it using the talkback link below.

PODCAST: Maybe it's a Sign O' The Times that you're listening to critics' audio recordings about great music, but this podcast about how we chose the best albums of the 1980s really is a Thriller. Give it a listen below.

PODCAST: Here's music even the younger set will know by heart. Listen to selected clips from the 1990s through present day as music critic Josh Tyrangiel discusses his picks.

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This album is a humble offering to Him, wrote John Coltrane in the linter notes to his masterwork A Love Supreme. "An attempt to say 'Thank You God' through our work." After groundbreaking work with Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis, Coltrane had taken flight as a solo artist. But after his monumental 1959 Giant Steps, he had taken his powerhouse "sheets of sound" approach to the tenor saxophone as far as he could go. A Love Supreme's four-part suite represented a new approach — sparer, more fluid, more intense. This musical prayer was the high-water mark, too, for Coltrane's classic quartet of pianist McCoy Tyner, bass player Jimmy Garrison, and monster drummer Elvin Jones. (The 2002 deluxe reissue includes the only live performance of the suite.) Elsewhere in the notes, Coltrane wrote that "God breathes through us so completely...so gently we hardly feel it...yet, it is our everything" This was never more true than in the music on A Love Supreme.