Ten great albums inspired by John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme

From hip-hop to illbient, we trace Coltrane’s huge musical footprint from 1965

By 1965, John Coltrane had mastered many of jazz’s movements. As accompanist, Coltrane had worked with bebop greats like Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. With his second release, Blue Train, he crafted a classic of the hard bop era. In 1961 – after playing on Miles Davis’ seminal modal effort Kind of Blue – he further explored the modal style with his commercially successful My Favourite Things.

But, though all of these are acclaimed outings, few recordings have received as much universal praise as A Love Supreme. Indeed, the album is uniquely well-balanced; virtuosic but emotional, avant-garde but accessible, free but controlled. With McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Garrison on upright bass, the quartet crafted a declaration of spiritual gratitude that was non-denominational, exploratory, and deeply powerful.

This only begins to describe why the album has had such an enormous influence – and you can check for yourself, as it’s just been reissued. Below are ten albums influenced (to varying degrees) by this Coltrane masterpiece.

Alice Coltrane – Journey in Satchidananda (Impulse)

Following John Coltrane’s death in 1967, the nascent language of spiritual jazz had lost its most prominent medium. Thankfully, Alice Coltrane – his wife and frequent collaborator – would inherit this modal, devotional jazz foundation and push it to its outer limits.

Though much of her early solo work could be considered a paean to her late husband, it is 1971’s Journey in Satchidananda that stands out. The record – aided by the continuous, hypnotic drone of the Indian tanpura – develops A Love Supreme’s interest in Eastern philosophy into a truly unique and affecting opus. If A Love Supreme is the beginning of spiritual jazz, Journey in Satchidananda is deep into its evolution.

The Byrds – Fifth Dimension (Music on Vinyl)

It’s perhaps a stretch to claim that The Byrds’ 1966 psychedelic folk-rock album Fifth Dimension was directly influenced by A Love Supreme. But we know that the band had been obsessed with Coltrane’s recording of ‘India’ as well as his 1961 album Africa/Brass.

We also know that when Fifth Dimension was recorded, A Love Supreme had become a enormous hit with the hippie counterculture – of which The Byrds were a part. Indeed, more than just the overtly Coltrane-inspired song ‘Eight Miles High’, the album’s embrace of psychedelia and raga-inflected structures certainly parallels Coltrane’s innovations.

Pharaoh Sanders – Karma (Impulse)

Albert Ayler famously once proclaimed, “Trane was the Father, Pharoah was the Son, I am the Holy Ghost.” With 1969’s Karma, Sanders solidified this notion while carving out his own space in the spiritual jazz idiom. This is spiritual in its truest sense, Sanders’ emotional, irrepressibly free playing crying out over the band’s dense, hypnotic instrumentation in stunning fashion.

The first track – a 32-minute long masterwork – should be counted among the best recordings of the post-Coltrane free jazz scene. Aided by the intense vocals of Leon Thomas, waves of dense African-inflected percussion, and a recurring mantra-like bass line, Sanders’ odyssey of a record remains a breathtaking experience for the listener.

Carlos Santana & John McLaughlin – Love Devotion Surrender (Columbia)

Love Devotion Surrender is one part John Coltrane-tribute, and one part tribute to the spiritual teachings of Sri Chinmoy. Indeed, by 1972, Carlos Santana and jazz-rock legend John McLaughlin were immersed within the guru’s non-denominational philosophy.

But this only strengthens its connection to A Love Supreme, a record similarly devoted to a universalist, spiritual expression. Beginning with a rendition of A Love Supreme’s ‘Acknowledgement’, Santana and McLaughlin trade virtuosic guitar solos in often dazzling style. Interestingly however, it’s the subtle moments that are more effective. A beautiful, understated rendition of Coltrane’s ‘Naima’ is a highlight.

Eric B & Rakim – Paid in Full (UMC)

Rakim is credited by many as being the progenitor of what we now recognise as flow. Prior to Rakim’s multi-syllabic, internal rhymes, hip-hop had none of the rhythmic complexity that is so commonplace in the genre now. But the source of this complexity is as interesting as what came after. Rakim, who himself played saxophone at school, has talked about how Coltrane’s style introduced him to the possibilities of manipulating time and rhythm; he even goes so far as to call him a “musical North Star” in his autobiography. The sense of musical freedom found on A Love Supreme – and indeed all of Coltrane’s works – allowed Rakim to redefine what rap could be.

The Butterfield Blues Band – East-West (Warner Japan)

Though a lot of The Butterfield Blues Band’s East-West shares some vague lineage with Coltrane’s blues inflected hard-bop works, it’s the two instrumental tracks on the record that show a stronger link. Inspired by Coltrane’s explorations of Indian music, the band would attempt a hitherto unheard-of synthesis of gritty blues, modal jazz, and virtuosic Indian classical.

Along with the swinging Nat Adderley-penned standard ‘Work Song’, the result was the title-cut of the album, a 13 minute long raga-inflected improvisation. This new psychedelic blues was partly influenced by the innovations of John Coltrane on records like A Love Supreme.

Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced? (Legacy Vinyl)

Jimi Hendrix is responsible for a variety of innovations within rock music. But one particular feature of the The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s work was indebted not to Hendrix but to the diverse influences of the group’s drummer, Mitch Mitchell. In addition to his love of drummers like Max Roach, Tony Williams, and Philly Joe Jones, Mitchell was particularly enamoured with the work of A Love Supreme’s Elvin Jones.

Paired with Hendrix’s experimental impulses, Mitchell’s looser, Jones-tinged drumming helped create the uniquely adventurous tone of Are You Experienced? On some tracks – like the swinging “Third Stone From The Sun” – the jazz influence is clear; on others – such as the rhythmically complex “Manic Depression” – it’s less overt. It’s this jazz-infused sensibility that led Hendrix to call Mitchell “my Elvin Jones”.

Steve Reich – Music for 18 Musicians (Nonesuch)

It may seem an incongruously large leap from John Coltrane’s spiritual opus to the pioneering minimalism of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. But Steve Reich has a variety of understated similarities with Coltrane. Within both artists’ work, there is an emphasis on texture, tone, and – although to vastly different extents – repetition. Indeed, it was Coltrane’s Africa/Brass that showed Reich the value of elaboration within a harmonic constant.

With regard to A Love Supreme, Reich has explained, “what knocks me about Coltrane is that he’s the most harmonically static player and the most harmonically adventurous at the same time”. The album – along with Coltrane’s other work – was formative in Reich’s creation of the minimalist idiom. Music for 18 Musicians is considered by many to be the moment when this genre took root.

Four Tet – Everything Ecstatic (Domino)

Before making the dense, electronic record that is Everything Ecstatic, Kieran Hebden was trying to infuse his music with the spirituality of gospel, Sun Ra, and one of his favourite musicians, John Coltrane. In Hebden’s words, “their records aren’t being made to, you know, make a good record.

They’re a communication with God. I definitely have this bee in my bonnet; unless I can speak to God through my laptop, I’m never going to make a great record.” With Everything Ecstatic, the influence of Coltrane’s
spiritual jazz is present in the chaotic, clattering drumbeats of “turtle turtle up”, the uproarious free-jazz crescendo of “sun drums and soil” and the record’s overarching search for spirituality. It’s worth a listen.

Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma (Warp)
Following the rise of Flying Lotus and his Brainfeeder label, a question immediately began to circulate in the music press: is this jazz? Steven Ellison (Flying Lotus’ real name) certainly thought so. For Ellison, his work on albums like You’re Dead and Cosmogramma was a continuation of the fusion experiments pioneered by the likes of Miles Davis. But Ellison also looked to his own family’s rich jazz legacy for inspiration.

Indeed, Cosmogramma is on this list in part because of jazzier cuts like ‘Arkestry’ and ‘German Haircut’, but also because of Ellison’s relation to the Coltrane family (Alice Coltrane was his aunt). The album directly references this lineage; two tracks feature his cousin Ravi Coltrane on saxophone while ‘Drips//Auntie’s Harp’ samples his aunt’s iconic playing. If Cosmogramma forms a kind of indefinable fusion, then a significant element in that fusion is the spiritual jazz of Alice and John Coltrane.

Noah Sparkes