Status Updates From A Love Supreme: The Story o...

‘I want to get to a point where I can feel the vibrations of a particular place at a particular moment and compose a song right there, on the spot — then throw it away.’

‘Sun Ra felt some credit was due, “[After my group] moved to New York [in 1961] and… stayed in a hotel, Coltrane would come by, and I’d talk to him again about things… he never gave me a cup of coffee.’

‘Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thoughts, fears and emotions — time — all made from one.’

‘It’s an unrehearsed move that has never been corrected or erased. Coltrane had begun his chant off-microphone; the words “a love” were lost, but “supreme” remains. Van Gelder quickly adjusted Coltrane’s microphone level to catch the next full utterance: “a love supreme…”

‘John used to tell me how to listen to the music, so that I could get the most out of it. He would say things to me like, “You listen to a song, five times, Cecilia. Listen to it instrument by instrument. Play that song and listen to the bass all the way through. Listen to it again, and listen to the saxophone. Don’t just listen to it once and then attempt to give it a critique.”

‘How kind you are to me — to give — the universe revealed I see/Yes now
I’ll go to sleep — it’s right, sweet — I rest in peace / At night—‘

“What was so impressive?” When I couldn’t explain, he would say, “Don’t be like so many people we know. If you can’t explain what the difference was that you heard, what impressed you, just don’t say anything.” He was really quite the teacher as far as I was concerned. He taught me how to listen to jazz, what to listen for, how to be humble and not frontin’ on the music.’

‘I feel that basically the music should be dedicated to the goodness in people, the good things in life… folk tunes usually spring from these simple things… maybe I can work on this, listen to them and learn to combine what’s done around the world with what I feel here.’

‘A drummer should know the melody… that way the song can be played as a unit, not just two or three people carrying the whole thing and the drummer sitting back there just keeping time.’ — Elvin Jones

‘Another revelatory moment takes place at the very end of the same tune, as Coltrane blows breathily, sounding a note that seems to sit between to others. It’s a startling example of “multiphonics” — ‘Monk showed me how to make two or three notes at one time on tenor… he just looked at my horn and “felt” the mechanica of what had to be done to get this effect.’

‘Wherein some people would lay back on what they had already learned to play, if there was a specific problem that bothered Coltrane, he would zoom in on that problem until he solved it.’

‘He didn’t hardly ever hang out, he would go back to his hotel room to practice… It was almost like he was on a mission.’ — Miles Davis

‘Trane struck such a spiritual chord in so many listeners that people started to think of him as being beyond human. I think that’s unfair. He was just a human being like you and me — but he was willing to practice more, to do all the things that somebody has to do to excel. The real value in what John Coltrane did was that what he accomplished, he did as a human.’

‘He walked down and there was that joy, that peace in his face, tranquility. So I said, “Tell me everything, we didn’t see you really for four or five days…” He 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.”