Woetoe’s Reviews > A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album > Status Update

‘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

‘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.’