John Coltrane: Acknowledgement

Those first bass notes, those first pleas from the saxophone so begins Coltranes love letter to God. He offered up A Love Supreme as a gift to his Creator, as words of praise and as a confession. His playing is the embodiment of a quest; you can hear him searching for something, seeking guidance, as the chords move up and up, and the horn lines keep reaching higher. On musical merits, A Love Supreme particularly the first movement, Acknowledgement, where Coltrane chants a love supreme with his vocal cords when he had said it enough with his horn stands as a singular achievement in the history of music, an album that belongs in every collection of American music. But Coltrane was also seeking spiritual fulfillment when he recorded A Love Supreme. For the rest of us, it is itself spiritually fulfilling.