He recorded it in one session on December 9, 1964, at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, leading a quartet featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.

A Love Supreme is a through-composed[2] suite[3] in four parts: "Acknowledgement" (which includes the oral chant that gives the album its name), "Resolution", "Pursuance", and "Psalm".

One critic has written that the album was intended to represent a struggle for purity, an expression of gratitude, and an acknowledgement that the musician's talent comes from a higher power.

[4] The album’s improvisational and spiritual intensity has led some to liken it to glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, as it conveys a profound sense of ecstatic devotion.

[5] This sacred quality has led it to become the “central text” of the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco.

[13] An alternative version of "Acknowledgement" was recorded the next day on December 10 with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp and a second bassist, Art Davis.

For years the only known live recording of the "Love Supreme" suite was of a performance at the Festival Mondial du Jazz Antibes in Juan-les-Pins, France, on July 26, 1965.

[14] A further iteration with more studio breakdowns and overdubs was issued as a three-disc complete masters edition released by Impulse!

[2] A Love Supreme was widely recognized as a work of deep spirituality and analyzed with religious subtext, although cultural studies scholars Richard W. Santana and Gregory Erickson argued that the "avant-garde jazz suite" could be interpreted otherwise.

[33] According to music professor Ingrid Monson of Harvard University, the album was an exemplary recording of modal jazz.

[35] Calling it a "legendary album-long hymn of praise", Rolling Stone said that "Coltrane's majestic, often violent blowing (famously described as 'sheets of sound') is never self-aggrandizing" and that he is "aloft with his classic quartet", "soar[ing] with nothing but gratitude and joy" on a compelling journey for listeners.

[45] As Christgau explains, the record was "adored by American hippies from the Byrds and Carlos Santana on down, and served as theme music to Lester Bangs's wake at CBGB".

Both Santana and fellow guitarist John McLaughlin have called the album one of their biggest early influences and recorded Love Devotion Surrender in 1973 as a tribute.

Christgau, writing in 2020, said, "it's meditative rather than freewheeling, with each member of his classic quartet instructed to embark on his own harmonically mapped excursion and the title set to a chanted four-note melody you could hum in your sleep.

[2] All tracks composed by John Coltrane and published by Jowcol Music (BMI) Disc 3 is included only with the "Super Deluxe Edition" version of this release.