Sixty years ago Jazz giant John Coltrane released his master stroke ‘A Love Supreme’ and the music world is yet to see anything resembling a sequel. I don’t mean a sequel in the sense of a second iteration from the greatest to ever sound a saxophone, I mean no album has ever accomplished what this seminal album has. Not to say that there aren’t literally hundreds of albums that have been released since then that I and millions of others adore, but none of them have touched the place that this album has, the Divine.

Written in two weeks of seclusion, the story goes that on arrival home of his wife Alice Coltrane with their newly born son, the maestro himself was moved by a sense of providence to write a masterpiece given to all mankind through him, by God. After descending from his isolation, he brought the completed sheets to his iconic quartet and in one single day recorded what would go on to be the most moving, meaningful and astounding album any recording artist has ever achieved. An album in 4 movements, each “song” represents a stage on the path of spiritual awakening.

Beginning with the frantic ‘Acknowledgement‘, ‘Resolution‘ and ‘Pursuance‘, all eliciting a desperation, confusion and earnest seeking, the album climaxes with the powerfully somber ‘Psalm‘: a ballad of utter devotion and deep spiritual overtones. The vinyl sleeves back cover features an intensely devotional poem written by Coltrane himself, many years had to pass before Coltrane mega nerds figured out that the quasi-melodic solo of ‘Psalm‘ was actually the master of the horn sounding out in pigeon or phonetic melody the poem itself, as illustrated by a youtube video that blew this writer’s actual mind. I and many others too, the poem is used as the central text and hymn by the church of Coltrane, which deify the mythical man as a saint and prophet of the civil rights movement and beyond.

There’s so much more I could say about this album, but ultimately the only statements that really matter are that I dearly love and cherish its ambition, its spiritual splendour and its unbelievable execution. No album in jazz has ever pushed a boundary this far, and in my opinion, the boundary will likely never be pushed further again. I tentatively live in hope that someone will come along and prove me wrong, but until then, I’ll keep listening to ‘A Love Supreme’.