Beyond A Love Supreme: John Coltrane and the Legacy of an Album by Tony Whyton (review)

Tony Whyton’s Beyond A Love Supreme is an essential book for those interested in current jazz historiography, jazz culture, and African American art. Recorded for Impulse! in 1964, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme is a canonical album in jazz history and is considered one of the great achievements of modern music. The recording embodies Coltrane’s interest in spiritual exploration during his later years.

Whyton’s carefully researched and insightful study shows how this iconic album has been used in jazz culture, by fans and critics alike, to both challenge and reinforce existing jazz binaries. Whyton argues that these binaries are used to exert ideological control not only over jazz discourse, but of the memory of Coltrane, which has deified his approach to life and music. Coltrane has been canonized to a degree that the undeniable beauty and power of this record makes it impervious to critical observation. Whyton shows how A Love Supreme has been “perceived over time, and how it makes us think about both jazz history … and about recordings.”

Whyton’s sources range from Coltrane’s biography, oral histories with musicians, and creative and critical writing about Coltrane. He argues that A Love Supreme is a symbol for all sorts of cultural mythologies and ideological values; these include: improvisation versus composition, black music versus white music, commercial music versus art music, live performance versus studio recording, and pure living versus drug abuse.

For example, Coltrane’s widow, Alice Coltrane, often repeated the account of the album’s creation that “It was like Moses coming down from the mountain … [Coltrane] said ‘This is the first time that I have received all of the music for what I want to record, in a suite. This is the first time I have everything, everything ready.” Yet, there is ample evidence that Coltrane in fact “produced a perfectly conceived composition prior to entering the studio.” The creation story illustrated the sort of contradiction of the isolated artist being inspired by supernatural forces versus that of a practiced and studious artist writing compositions.

The book takes up challenges to move beyond the mythmaking processes surrounding A Love Supreme; Whyton also seeks to “liberate the recordings from the confines of the neo-traditionalist agenda.” Since A Love Supreme changed the way the 1960s addressed race, spirituality, and using abstract art to address God, it is important to understand how it can reveal underlying ideological viewpoints.

Beyond A Love Supreme helps the listener navigate the complex and conflicting histories swirling around this major jazz recording. Whyton insists that there is no such thing as “the music itself”; he successfully and convincingly shows how Coltrane’s work uncovers worlds of competing ideas about race, spirituality, authenticity, and of the 1960s. Whyton’s book is an engaging and challenging voice in current conversations in jazz historiography and research.