John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme came out in 1964, an “album-long hymn of praise,” writes Rolling Stone, “tran­scen­dent music per­fect for the high point of the civ­il rights move­ment” as well as Coltrane’s grow­ing spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing after kick­ing his hero­in habit. The record amazed crit­ics and jazz fans alike and by 1970, it had sold over half-a-mil­lion copies. But lovers of Coltrane would only have only one chance to see him per­form the full four-part suite live, and not in any state­side clubs but in Antibes, France on July 26, 1965, where he played two nights with his quar­tet.

You can see twelve of those mirac­u­lous min­utes above, con­sist­ing of the first two move­ments of the suite, “Acknowl­edge­ment” and “Res­o­lu­tion.” This is a gor­geous per­for­mance, cap­tur­ing what sax­o­phon­ist David Lieb­man describes as “an end and a new musi­cal begin­ning” for Coltrane.

The sec­ond evening’s per­for­mance, below, begins with “Naima,” on which, Lieb­man says, “Trane solos com­bin­ing a strik­ing lyri­cal approach off­set by mul­ti-not­ed, dense­ly packed runs.” If you’ve ever won­dered what Ira Gitler meant in describ­ing Coltrane’s style as “sheets of sound,” these per­for­mances will clear up the mys­tery.

The mid-six­ties was a piv­otal time for jazz—before the elec­tron­ic fusion exper­i­ments to come, as hard bop and free jazz com­bined with the dis­so­nance of ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal music, which had “per­me­at­ed jazz for at least a hand­ful of artists.”  Coltrane still spoke the “com­mon language”—the “stan­dard reper­toire stem­ming from the Amer­i­can song book and/or orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions with sim­i­lar and pre­dictable har­mon­ic move­ment,” yet in his case, he “added modal­i­ty to the mix,” a trick picked up from Miles Davis.

Coltrane sad­ly died from liv­er can­cer in 1967 at age 40 and did not live to see the strange, sur­pris­ing turns jazz would take in the decade to come. How his brash, yet enchant­i­ng play­ing would have trans­lat­ed in the 70s is anyone’s guess. Yet, like so many artists who die young and in their prime, he left us with a body of work almost mys­ti­cal in its inten­si­ty and beauty—so much so that his more reli­gious fol­low­ers made him a saint after his death. Watch­ing these too-brief record­ings above, it’s not hard to see why.

The sec­ond night’s per­for­mances from the Antibes Jazz Fes­ti­val were issued as a live album in 1988. The first night’s live show­case of A Love Supreme has seen sev­er­al releas­es, and if you’re one of those who pro­fess­es devo­tion to this amaz­ing piece of work, you’d do well to pick up a copy, if you don’t own one already. “The inten­si­ty if the Antibes live per­for­mance,” writes Lieb­man in his 2011 lin­er notes to the Jazz Icons/Mosaic release of the Coltrane Live at Antibes 1965 DVD, “far exceeds the stu­dio record­ing” of the album. And that’s say­ing some­thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Watch John Coltrane and His Great Quin­tet Play ‘My Favorite Things’ (1961)

The World Accord­ing to John Coltrane: His Life & Music Revealed in Heart­felt 1990 Doc­u­men­tary

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue changed jazz. It changed music, peri­od. So I take it very seri­ous­ly. But when I see the ani­mat­ed sheet music of the first cut, “So What,” I can’t help but think of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts car­toons, and their Vince Guaral­di com­po­si­tions. I mean no offense to Miles. His modal jazz swings, and it’s fun, as fun to lis­ten to as it is to watch in ris­ing and falling arpeg­gios. The YouTube uploader, Dan Cohen, gives us this on his chan­nel Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music, with apolo­gies to Jim­my Cobb for the lack of drum nota­tion.

Also from Cohen’s chan­nel, we have Char­lie Parker’s music ani­mat­ed. Nev­er one to keep up with his admin, Park­er left his estate unable to recu­per­ate roy­al­ties from com­po­si­tions like “Con­fir­ma­tion” (above).

Nonethe­less, every­one knows it’s Bird’s tune, and to see it ani­mat­ed above is to see Park­er dance a very dif­fer­ent step than Miles’ post-bop cool, one filled with com­plex melod­ic para­graphs instead of chordal phras­es.

And above, we have John Coltrane’s mas­sive “Giant Steps,” with its rapid-fire bursts of quar­ter notes, inter­rupt­ed by half-note asides. Coltrane’s icon­ic 1960 com­po­si­tion dis­plays what Ira Gitler called in a 1958 Down­beat piece, “sheets of sound.” Gitler has said the image he had in his head was of “bolts of cloth undu­lat­ing as they unfurled,” but he might just as well have thought of sheets of rain, so mul­ti­tude and heavy is Coltrane’s melod­ic attack.

See Cohen’s Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music chan­nel for two more Char­lie Park­er pieces, “Au Pri­vave” and “Bloom­di­do.”

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Char­lie Park­er Plays with Jazz Greats Cole­man Hawkins, Bud­dy Rich, Lester Young & Ella Fitzger­ald (1950)

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The great jazz sax­o­phone play­er John Coltrane was born 87 years ago today. To mark the occa­sion we present this rare doc­u­ment from the Smith­so­ni­an’s Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Coltrane’s hand­writ­ten out­line of his ground­break­ing jazz com­po­si­tion A Love Supreme.

Record­ed in Decem­ber of 1964 and released in 1965, A Love Supreme is Coltrane’s per­son­al dec­la­ra­tion of his faith in God and his aware­ness of being on a spir­i­tu­al path. “No road is an easy one,” writes Coltrane in a prayer at the bot­tom of his own lin­er notes for the album, “but they all go back to God.”

If you click the image above and exam­ine a larg­er copy of the man­u­script, you will notice that Coltrane has writ­ten the same sen­ti­ment at the bot­tom of the page. “All paths lead to God.” The piece is made up of a pro­gres­sion of four suites. The names for each sec­tion are not on the man­u­script, but Coltrane even­tu­al­ly called them “Acknowl­edge­ment,” “Res­o­lu­tion,” “Pur­suance” and “Psalm.”

In the man­u­script, Coltrane writes that the “A Love Supreme” motif should be “played in all keys togeth­er.” In the record­ing of “Acknowl­edge­ment,” Coltrane indeed repeats the basic theme near the end in all keys, as if he were con­scious­ly exhaust­ing every path. As jazz his­to­ri­an Lewis Porter, author of John Coltrane: His Life and Music, tells NPR in the piece below:

Coltrane more or less fin­ished his impro­vi­sa­tion, and he just starts play­ing the “Love Supreme” motif, but he changes the key anoth­er time, anoth­er time, anoth­er time. This is some­thing very unusu­al. It’s not the way he usu­al­ly impro­vis­es. It’s not real­ly impro­vised. It’s some­thing that he’s doing. And if you actu­al­ly fol­low it through, he ends up play­ing this lit­tle “Love Supreme” theme in all 12 pos­si­ble keys. To me, he’s giv­ing you a mes­sage here.

In sec­tion IV of the man­u­script, for the part lat­er named “Psalm,” Coltrane writes that the piece is a “musi­cal recita­tion of prayer by horn,” and is an “attempt to reach tran­scen­dent lev­el with orches­tra ris­ing har­monies to a lev­el of bliss­ful sta­bil­i­ty at the end.” Indeed, in the same NPR piece which you can lis­ten to below, Rev. Fran­zo Wayne King of the Saint John Coltrane African Ortho­dox Church in San Fran­cis­co describes how his con­gre­ga­tion one day dis­cov­ered that Coltrane’s play­ing cor­re­sponds direct­ly to his prayer at the bot­tom of the lin­er notes.

In addi­tion to Porter and King, NPR’s Eric West­er­velt inter­views pianist McCoy Tyn­er, the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of Coltrane’s quar­tet. The 13-minute piece, “The Sto­ry of ‘A Love Supreme,’ ” is a fas­ci­nat­ing overview of one of the great mon­u­ments of jazz.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ Ani­mat­ed

Watch John Coltrane and His Great Quin­tet Play ‘My Favorite Things’ (1961)

‘The Sound of Miles Davis’: Clas­sic 1959 Per­for­mance with John Coltrane

John Coltrane’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot (1945)

Do you ever have déjà vu? Last week we post­ed Jack Ker­ouac’s U.S. Naval Reserve enlist­ment mugshot from 1943 and the response was enthu­si­as­tic. Many of you were fas­ci­nat­ed to see the great Beat writer at such a ten­der age and in such an atyp­i­cal, unlib­er­at­ed con­text. Today we offer an eeri­ly sim­i­lar pho­to of anoth­er free­wheel­ing icon of 20th cen­tu­ry art: John Coltrane, when he was 18 years old.

Coltrane entered the Navy on the same day the Unit­ed States dropped the atom­ic bomb on Hiroshi­ma (August 6, 1945) and was assigned reserve sta­tus, as were many African-Amer­i­cans at that time. Accord­ing to Lewis Porter in John Coltrane: His Life and Music, only lim­it­ed num­bers of black men served as sea­man after 1942. Pri­or to that, they were only allowed to work as kitchen help. The Navy was seg­re­gat­ed, and Coltrane was sent to boot camp at the black sec­tion of Samp­son Naval Train­ing Cen­ter in upstate New York. By the time he fin­ished train­ing, World War II was over.

In late Novem­ber of 1945, after a tran­si­tion­al month at Camp Shoe­mak­er near San Fran­cis­co, sea­man sec­ond class Coltrane was assigned to active duty in Hawaii. Sta­tioned on the island of Oahu, Coltrane played clar­inet and alto sax­o­phone in a black Navy band called the Melody Mas­ters. He made his first record­ings with some of the musi­cians from the band in the sum­mer of 1946. But all the while Coltrane was serv­ing, the Navy was in the process of down­siz­ing. With the war over, bands were no longer need­ed to boost morale. So on August 11, 1946–just over a year after his enlistment–Coltrane was dis­charged from the Navy and sent home.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Coltrane and His Great Quin­tet Play ‘My Favorite Things’

John Coltrane Plays Only Live Per­for­mance of A Love Supreme

John Coltrane: Three Great Euro­pean Per­for­mances, 1969, 1961 and 1965