John McLaughlin & Carlos Santana - A Live Supreme (1973)

In 1971, John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana were both recent disciples of the guru Sri Chinmoy, and musically Santana was moving from rock toward jazz and fusion, experiencing a "spiritual awakening", while McLaughlin had left Miles Davis' band and was forming his new group, The Mahavishnu Orchestra. Santana had been a fan of McLaughlin, and the two had started playing and recording together in 1972. According to his biographer Marc Shapiro, Santana had much to learn from McLaughlin: "He would sit for hours, enthralled at the new ways to play that McLaughlin was teaching him," and his new spirituality had its effect on the music: "the feeling was that Carlos's newfound faith was present in every groove." In 1973 they recorded an album together, inspired by the teachings of Sri Chinmoy and intended as a tribute to John Coltrane. It contains two Coltrane compositions, two McLaughlin songs, and a traditional gospel song arranged by Santana and McLaughlin. Fans of Santana were, apparently, disappointed, as they were still reeling from the radical direction shift toward jazz on 'Caravanserai', and praying that it was an aberration, whereas it was lauded by critics, who could hear this recording in the context of not only Santana's development as a guitarist, but as the logical extension of the music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis influencing rock musicians; and of course, McLaughlin was a former Davis sideman. 

A ten city tour was undertaken to promote the album during late summer of 1973, just after the summer Mahavishnu Orchestra tour. Each of the ten concerts lasted nearly three hours, with the band line-up consisting of McLaughlin and Santana on guitars, Larry Young on keys, Doug Rauch on bass, Billy Cobham on drums, and Armando Peraza on percussion, and in contrast to the mixed reviews given the studio album, the reception of the live shows was almost universally ecstatic. Despite knowing that these two world-class guitarists would almost certainly play extended versions of the album tracks, their record company never considered recording any of the shows for later release as a live album, and so it was down to the bootleggers to provide a permanent record of these once in a lifetime concerts. This recording is from Saratoga Springs on 26 August 1973, and while it is only an hour and twenty minutes long, it does include the only live performance of the title track of the album, although the final track had to be faded, as presumably the tape ran out. The sound quality is excellent, but the cheering at the end did sound a bit distant, and so I decided to remove the audience completely so that we could more clearly hear every note of this stunning music.  

Track listing

01 Meditation
02 Flame-Sky
03 A Love Supreme
04 I'm Aware Of You
05 Love, Devotion And Surrender
06 Taurian Matador
07 Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord