John Coltrane’s seminal record “A Love Supreme” is one of the most critically lauded jazz albums of all time. The classic album – which turned 60 earlier this year – is the subject of a talk at the McCracken County Public Library this Thursday.
Brian Clardy – a professor of history at Murray State University and one of the hosts of Cafe Jazz on WKMS – will be leading “A Love Supreme: the Artistry and Spirituality of John Coltrane,” which will examine the record’s storied musical legacy and its religious significance.
Clardy said his personal “John Coltrane story” started four decades ago with the turn of a radio dial.
“I just graduated from high school, and I'd gotten my first car, and I was commuting to and from classes at UT-Martin, and that is actually when I discovered WKMS,” Clardy said. “One particular day, I was going to class, and I heard on Morning Edition a story about a musician. Honestly, I never heard of John Coltrane. So I listened attentively, and I loved what I heard, and I was curious about it. And so after classes were over, I went over to the college library, and I would listen on vinyl to the music of John Coltrane.”
Coltrane, who plays saxophone on the album, is joined by Elvin Jones on drums, McCoy Tyner on piano and Jimmy Garrison on double bass. There’s no shortage of praise for the album. The quartet’s sound was described upon its release by Time Out critic John Lewis as “[pulling] off the rare trick of being utterly uncompromising yet completely accessible.” And Robert Christgau, a leading voice in music criticism for more than 50 years, wrote that it was “adored by American hippies from the Byrds and Carlos Santana on down, and served as theme music to Lester Bangs's wake at CBGB.”
When it was released in January 1965, Clardy said the four-piece devotional album “set music ablaze” with its eclectic blend of jazz and gospel music, poetry, eastern music and religious themes of various faiths.
“Coltrane was raised in the AME Zion Church, which is not exactly a Pentecostal type of movement, but – living in North Carolina, of course – he was exposed to Pentecostal worship styles and the preaching of the Black church. So that figured very heavily into Coltrane's calculus,” said Clardy. “Coltrane after 1957 he has this great spiritual awakening where he's dealing with his drug addiction and his alcoholism. He breaks beyond just the Judeo-Christian, evangelical, Pentecostal frame. He starts embracing Islam, the Baha’i movement, Zen Buddhism, Hinduism and so forth, and seeing the universality of those faith traditions. And that's what he's speaking to.”
Clardy describes Coltrane as “a seeker,” striving to experience anc commune with the divine.
“He made this album as a tribute to the divine, but I also see it as an invitation,” he said. “He wants us to join him in this spiritual quest, and to look inward to ourselves and to look outward and how and embrace the divine in each other.”
Clardy describes his presentation on Thursday as both an informative session but also a listening experience. He said he hoped people come with an open mind and be ready to experience something different and unique.
“I want [people] to, yes, hear the music, but also listen – listen to the tones, listen to the noise that is within you,” Clardy said. “Especially [because], in this time that we live in – which is a very tumultuous one in itself – feels very similar to the 1960s, when this record was produced. It is eerily similar, and that's kind of what I want to appeal to.”
Clardy’s presentation, “A Love Supreme: the Artistry and Spirituality of John Coltrane,” will be on June 12 at 5:30 p.m. at the McCracken County Public Library. The event is free and open to the public.
Editor’s note: WKMS is cosponsoring Clardy’s Coltrane lecture at the McCracken County Public Library’s Evening Upstairs series.
