Coltrane: A Love Supreme, Part 3, for his Birthday—Overdubbing

In honor of Coltrane’s birthday (September 23), let’s continue our in-depth study of his most famous recording. (Please look in the Index on the home page for Parts 1 and 2.)

In a previous essay, we mentioned that Coltrane overdubbed his voice chanting “A Love Supreme.” We’ll discuss that in a later essay. But it has not been generally recognized that he also overdubbed instruments on this album.

One curious thing I noticed back in 1978 is that there’s a second saxophone at the very end of “Psalm.” Over 20 years later, Victor Lin, an excellent pianist and violinist who took one of my Rutgers seminars when he was a grad student, pointed out that there are also two basses, and overdubbed drums.

Listen now to the end of “Psalm” as it appears on the released album—see if you can hear all the overdubbing. The second sax appears at 0:05. And please notice that there are two-handed rolls on timpani drums, along with cymbal crashes and other drum sounds at the same time. And at the very end, two basses are still playing after everyone else has finished, one bowing and one strumming:

In 2015, thirty-some years after I first wrote about the overdubbing, the original, undubbed ending was released as part of the super deluxe 3-CD edition. Please listen, and if you wish, go back to the dubbed version above to compare. Notice that there is only one cymbal crash (at 0:20) on this original version, and only the bowed bass (not plucked). And of course, there’s no sign of the second saxophone:

In September 1995 (or possibly ’96), while writing my book, I decided to see if I could find more information about the use of overdubbing, which was then still an unknown fact about this well-known album. I phoned Bob Thiele, the producer of this and most of Coltrane’s albums for Impulse. He had the reputation of being a bit of a gruff personality. The reputation was accurate. He said: “Are you crazy? Millions of people have heard that album. Don’t you think someone would have noticed if there is overdubbing on it?”

I held my ground, telling him that there certainly was overdubbing, whether or not anyone had noticed. Finally he suggested that I call Rudy Van Gelder, the recording engineer. I had already visited Van Gelder’s famous studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., with my friend Yasuhiro “Fuji” Fujioka, a Coltrane researcher from Japan, so we had been introduced. But Van Gelder was also a cantankerous sort, and he had almost the same reaction in almost the same words: “Are you crazy?!” Again I refused to back down, and finally he said, “OK, I’ll listen again and get back to you.” It seemed a little strange to me that he would need to hear his most famous recording again to know if there was overdubbing. I didn’t hear back from him, so it went out of my mind.

Four months later, on Martin Luther King’s birthday, my phone rang. It was Van Gelder, whom I had given up on by that point. “It took me a while,” he said, “but I listened again to the end of ‘A Love Supreme’ and you’re right, we did do some overdubbing.” In fact, he proudly told me, he had been a pioneer of overdubbing in jazz. He mentioned that back in 1954, one of his first recordings was an album called Bobby Sherwood and his All-Bobby Sherwood Orchestra, where that swing bandleader played every instrument of a big band except saxophones. Now that he’d remembered it, from that day on, Van Gelder mentioned the overdubbing when interviewed about A Love Supreme.

Still, to me the added saxophone — who simply plays two notes an octave apart — sounded rather raw, not really like Coltrane. So after hearing back from Van Gelder, I phoned Archie Shepp, since he performed on the second day of recording. (In addition, photos now confirm that no other saxophonist was present on the second day.) But Shepp knew nothing about it, adding (I paraphrase): “I certainly think I would have known if I was on the most famous jazz album of all time.”

However, to prepare for an auction in 2005, Guernsey’s hired Barry Kernfeld, editor of the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, to listen closely to some of the Coltrane family’s tapes and make a detailed report of their contents. In his report, he mentioned that the second sax was dubbed at the end of the first day of recording, December 9th, and that it appeared to be Coltrane. (Via this link, scroll down to “John Coltrane in Rudy Van Gelder’s Studio.”)

My friend Ken Druker, vice president for jazz development at Verve Label Group, was kind enough to allow me to hear that overdub insert, which was not included on the released album because it contains no new material. (It’s what you hear in the last two minutes of the released, overdubbed version of “Psalm.”) He told me that the tape box says December 9, so it has to be Coltrane (that is, Shepp was not there). With that in mind, I listened again, and while it sounds rough — and the upper note, which is held out, has a rather unsteady vibrato — I now hear that it certainly is identifiable as Coltrane. (Keep in mind that this came at the end of a long day of recording. Maybe he was tired.) In fact, and perhaps significantly, it’s very similar to the two Cs that he plays at 22 seconds into “Psalm” (at the word “Peace,” if you follow the poem, as I’ll explain).

Coltrane added these two notes after the bass and drums had already been overdubbed. Since all this happened on December 9, that also confirms that both bass parts (bowing and plucked) were overdubbed by Jimmy Garrison (because Art Davis was not there). And of course, both drum parts (rolls on the timpani, plus cymbals) were overdubbed by Jones.

And there appears to be another overdub, this one during “Resolution.” My late friend Bob Belden, saxophonist and record producer, pointed out what sounds like a “punch-in” (as we’d call it today) during Coltrane’s solo. With digital software, today we can do this perfectly. But at that time, using tape, it was very hard to make it perfect, and sure enough, you can hear one note “bleed” into the next one. First, let’s just hear the “punched in” note, a high Eb (F on the tenor saxophone). Listen closely:

To make it more clear, here it is three times in a row. Do you notice how the second note seems to overlap the first one, or grow out of it?

And finally, here is the complete ending theme of “Resolution,” which happens to consist of three similar eight-bar phrases, each one starting with that long note. Notice that the first time, that note is strong, and the second time at 0:11 it’s a bit weaker. It’s possible that the third time, at 0:21, it didn’t “speak” (play) at all, or came through poorly. So they decided it was better to dub it in, record over it, rather than do another take. It was kind of a “quick fix.” As with the sax at the end of “Psalm,” Coltrane and Van Gelder probably did this after the other musicians went home.

In the next essay of this series, we will return to Coltrane’s handwritten notes, which he prepared when he was planning the album.

All the best,
Lewis