I’ve been listening to quite a bit of jazz lately. More specifically, I’ve been listening to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. I had no idea that John Coltrane was part of the sextet that recorded Miles Davis’s career masterpiece Kind of Blue, which is lauded as the greatest jazz album of all time. After listening to it, I have found that many artists have sampled its recording and some describe it as a Bible, in that you should always have a copy in your house.
Coltrane would move on, create his own quartet, and eventually record the monumental A Love Supreme. It was recorded over two days, the bulk recorded on day one, and adjustments made on day two. I can’t stop listening to it. I ordered A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album from Amazon and it should be here tomorrow. The recording process is detailed, as well as reception, reviews, and its impact on jazz. I am partial to Coltrane and have listened to a lot of his recordings. There’s a podcast on iTunes called The Traneumentary, which has an accompanying website. In it well-known artists and jazz historians break down some great tracks of Coltrane’s, and all of A Love Supreme.
From Pandora:
Composed of four parts, each has a thematic progression leading to an understanding of spirituality through meditation. From the beginning, “Acknowledgement” is the awakening of sorts that trails off to the famous chanting of the theme at the end, which yields to the second act, “Resolution,” an amazingly beautiful piece about the fury of dedication to a new path of understanding. “Persuance” is a search for that understanding, and “Psalm” is the enlightenment.