Mister J.C.
Ashley Kahn's A Love Supreme celebrates John Coltrane's masterpiece.

IN A SEASON of remarkable music writing, A Love Supreme arrives as one of the most satisfying books of 2002. On an immediate level, of course, it commemorates the creation of one of the most significant albums in the history of recorded music, genre irrelevant. But in giving us new ways to think about Coltrane's composition--a piece of music that, as much as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, resists verbal summation--A Love Supreme is also that rarest of books about music which strikes a perfect balance among its several necessary elements.

"[As a reader] I'm the kid in the candy store," says Kahn. "I want it all. I want the historical stuff, and I want the anecdotal stuff, and I want the music, and I want huge overarching philosophical statements--not too much, but all in the balance--and I want pictures and everything else that comes with it. And I wanted to include all of that, without falling into dry academic prose on one side, or oh-so-moist hero worship on the other."
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A Love Supreme
The Story Of John Coltrane's Signature Album