n a seemingly ordinary room on the second floor of The Home was where John Coltrane composed his revolutionary masterpiece album, A Love Supreme. The room, with its window overlooking the woods behind the property, was not significant in its size or appearance, but it ended up becoming a sanctuary for Coltrane. On a quiet day in the summer of 1964, Coltrane was suddenly stuck with a creative momentum that could not be broken and retreated to The Homes upstairs room. What was produced at the end of this creative seclusion changed the world of music.
His self-seclusion lasted over a span of five days. During this period, Coltrane rarely left the room at all. That quiet, peaceful room let him become fully absorbed in his craft. As he worked away on the album, he also worked on producing accompanying poetic work for A Love Supreme. Some poems were “read” through the captivating sound of the saxophone in the final part of the completed album.
When asked about the creation of A Love Supreme, Alice Coltrane recalled that she did not speak to John during his creative isolation and only brought him his meals. She recounted the moment when he finally emerged from the upstairs room, saying it was “like Moses coming down from the mountain.” With A Love Supreme finally completed, he was ready to record. On December 9, 1964, John and his quartet consisting of McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones headed to Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey to officially bring his work to life. The album was recorded in one session and was released the next year in January 1965 with Impulse! Records. The album took the world by storm, quickly becoming one of Coltrane’s best-selling albums. By 1970, sales of the album surpassed any other album Coltrane ever released. The impact of A Love Supreme remains strong to this very day. Recently, in 2021, 56 years after its release, the album gained the status of going platinum by surpassing one million copies sold.
The desire to resonate with the space that helped birth A Love Supreme is evident. Jazz fans were moved both emotionally and spiritually by the release of this album, so much so that people from all over the world are willing to make a pilgrimage to Long Island just to see the upstairs bedroom of the Dix Hills Home for themselves. Once the restoration project at The Home is completed, fans will be able to do just that. Photos, music scores, and handwritten notes and poems that inspired the creation process will adorn the upstairs bedroom, allowing visitors to become fully immersed in the room that helped change music forever.