Coltrane: A Love Supreme,7—"Acknowledgement," All Takes

Now that we’ve examined what Coltrane had planned, by examining all of his handwritten sketches, let’s examine how the recording of A Love Supreme actually turned out, beginning with the first movement, “Acknowledgement.” (It is sometimes announced at concerts as “A Love Supreme,” because it features the Main Motif so prominently, but that’s not what Coltrane called it.)

You will notice in this discussion that there are many alternate takes from the second day, with Archie Shepp, but almost none from the first day, the quartet session that produced the original album. (You can also see this by looking at the contents of the set that I’ve been referring to, The Complete Masters.) It is unheard of for any recording to be completed without a number of “outtakes.” So where are they? Well, in the early ‘70s, many original Impulse tape reels were thrown out—trashed! It’s a long story which I’ll tell you at another time. In short, we are lucky to have whatever takes we do have.

Early references to A Love Supreme sometimes mentioned a second version of the entire suite with Archie Shepp and Art Davis. This was a misunderstanding of what Coltrane wrote. In his liner notes he thanks Davis and Shepp for recording “a track” that wasn’t released, and as we now know, that track was “Acknowledgement.” It’s possible that Shepp himself added to the confusion, because, according to my fellow Coltrane scholar David Wild, Shepp said in a published interview (sometime prior to 1979) that he had recorded “the suite” on December 10, 1964, the day after the quartet version.

However, there are good reasons to believe that Coltrane had hoped to record all four parts of the suite on the second day with Shepp and Art Davis. For one thing, we saw that Coltrane envisioned having “one other horn,” and this is written at the top of his main note page, not limited to “Acknowledgement” only.

Also, at the start of the first take of “Acknowledgement” with Shepp, producer Bob Thiele says out loud “90246” (the record company’s reference number, called a master or matrix number) and then “Part One, Take One”:

Normally the producer or engineer would simply say “90246, Take One.” But for Thiele and engineer Rudy Van Gelder, it was policy when a piece was part of a suite to give each side of the LP its own number, not necessarily a new number for every piece. For example, on Coltrane’s later suite Meditations, side 1 and side 2 each have just one number, even though there are several pieces on each side.  (It was part of the producer’s job to keep track of timings, so as to know when enough music had been recorded for one side of an LP.)

The day before, Thiele had begun by assigning a number to each piece, 90243 for “Acknowledgement” and 90244 for “Resolution.” But apparently, he then learned from Coltrane that this was all part of one suite, and that “Pursuance” and “Psalm” were going to occupy Side 2 of the album. So he put them under one number, 90245.

Therefore, if you follow my reasoning, Thiele saying “Part One” on December 10 is an indication that, had things gone well, Coltrane would have gone on to record “Resolution” with Shepp and Davis. If so, Thiele would have announced that as “90246, Part Two, Take One.” And from there they could have proceeded to “Pursuance” and “Psalm.”

If I’m right, then why didn’t that happen? Well, by this time the quartet was an indelibly unified whole. Adding two new people opened up so many variables that it was impossible in just one recording session to achieve the same level of coherence as with the quartet. One piece of evidence for that is the presence of sheet music on stands during the second session (as pointed out by Oliver Huck in his article, “(Re-)Writing Jazz: The Manuscripts of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme”). Photographer Chuck Stewart was not there on the first day, but according to the band members there was no sheet music. Tyner said that, at the most, John sometimes wrote out basic chord symbols for him, and might play a bass part on the saxophone for Garrison. But Stewart’s photos from December 10 show that Coltrane had prepared some music parts for Shepp and Art Davis. Take a look at some of these photos, reproduced in Ashley Kahn’s books:

Coltrane discusses the sheet music with Shepp, with Tyner on the left and producer Thiele on the right

Art Davis, Garrison and Coltrane look at sheet music (bottom of the photo).

Evidently, Coltrane knew that he couldn’t expect Shepp and Davis to have the same powers of intuition as the three musicians he had performed with almost every day for about three years. But even with the sheet music to help them, it didn’t work out. After performing six takes just to get something usable on “Acknowledgement,” it must have been clear to Coltrane or Thiele (or both) that to re-record the whole suite with Shepp and Davis would require several more sessions, and possibly some rehearsals. So they decided not to try any further.

In fact, Shepp acknowledged that he could have used more preparation. He admitted many years later, in an interview in 2016, that “I wish now that I had enough nerve to look at the music. I didn’t look at any music or have any idea about what he intended to do.” Since he refers to what Coltrane “intended,” he apparently means that he wishes he’d seen music in advance. He goes on to say, “I wish I played more of what I knew to play rather than what might have been expected of me. I was really just overwhelmed with being with the man and trying to do what he wanted me to do. I must admit, I didn’t quite know what he wanted me to do.”

Nevertheless. Shepp acquits himself well, his growling, speech-inflected style making an effective contrast with Coltrane’s. And they interact well. For example, Trane plays a little figure with an octave and trills at 1:30 on Take 1, and he uses that as a kind of signature throughout these takes. Just a few seconds later, Shepp picks it up, and the two of them go back and forth with this throughout the remainder of the recording session.

Now, what about Coltrane’s own playing on “Acknowledgement”? Did he have anything prepared for himself? If so, it was surely not written, but memorized. A few years earlier, talking about “My Favorite Things” with journalist Ralph Gleason, he observed: “I’ve got several landmarks there that I know I’m going to get to, so I try to play something in between there that’s different.” (That interview, from 1961, can be found in the collection Conversations in Jazz.)

In the case of “Acknowledgement,” it’s clear from Coltrane’s notes and from the actual recordings that he did have certain landmarks in mind — landmarks that he almost certainly never communicated to his bandmates. I say “almost certainly” because, as I already noted, he usually told his colleagues the minimum necessary, such as the key, the tempo, the groove, the form, and the basic arrangement. Besides, they really didn’t need to know what Coltrane had in mind for his solo — he could trust them to hear it and to support what he played.

The first landmark is the way Coltrane begins his solo. It’s clear that while there is no exact initial theme to “Acknowledgement,” the beginning of the sax solo is similar every time—on the Master Take and on the four complete takes from the second day. Listen again to the opening phrases of Coltrane’s solo at 1:02 on the official release of “Acknowledgement.” Now, let’s compare that with what Coltrane played on the second day: On Take 1 with Shepp, Coltrane begins right around 1:00 as though he’s already in progress in his solo — not as dramatic as his entrance on the Master Take.

On Take 2, Coltrane begins with the octave-trill motif, then plays something very similar to what he plays on the Master:

For easier comparison, here is what Coltrane plays after the trills on Take 2 (for now, try to ignore Shepp’s repetition of the Main Motif in the background):

Compare that with his entrance on the Master Take:

This is the kind of thing that shows us that, even though he had nothing written down for his first solo, he had some very specific ideas in mind.

On Take 4 (3 and 5 are false starts, very short with no solos), he trills again, and Shepp picks it up as well. Then, somewhat similar to the first take, he plays as though he had skipped ahead a bit, rather than starting like the Master. Finally on 6, he starts right off with a solo that kind of combines the opening of the Master Take with the Main Motif, while Shepp plays the octave-trill motif behind him:

In short, we may conclude that the opening of his solo is one of his “landmarks,” something for which he had a plan in mind.

In fact, maybe he had more than a plan. Maybe he had specific words in mind for the beginning of his solo on “Acknowledgement.” To explore that idea further, next time we’re going to jump ahead to study the last movement, “Psalm,” for which he absolutely had words in mind. In future installments after that, we will return to “Acknowledgement” to hear aspects that we haven’t yet addressed, then look at the other two movements, and more. Stay with me!

All the best,
Lewis