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The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Recording Of A Love Supreme

Jazz Unlimited for SUnday, December 7 will be  “The Fifty Year Anniversary of the Recording of “A Love Supreme.”  On December 9, 1964, the John Coltrane Quartet entered Rudy Van Gelder’s studio with almost no written music but for a few sketches and what looked like a handwritten poem.  They proceeded to record the album “A Love Supreme,” one of the most important and best selling albums in jazz.  Since that time, three other versions of the work have been recorded along with interpretations of various sections by a number of artists.  We will hear these interpretations played by the Conrad Herwig “Latin Side of” ensemble, the Turtle Island String Quartet, Charles Lloyd, Kenny Garrett, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and sung by vocalists Suzanne Pittson and Kurt Elling.  In addition, the words to the fourth part, “Psalm,” will be read over Coltrane’s music for that part.

The Slide Show has my photographs of some of the musicians heard on this show.

This Archive of the show will be available until the morning of December 15, 2014.

This is the only surviving film of the only live performance of "A Love Supreme" in 1965 at the Antibbes Jazz Festival.  Only "Acknowledgment" and part of "Resolution" survive.  John Coltrane (ts) McCoy Tyner (p) Jimmy Garrison (b) Elvin Jones (d)

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.