For the past fourteen years in the States the National Recording Preservation Board and members of the US public have put forward names for inclusion in the National Recording Registry.

The initiative, according to the somewhat lofty tone of text on the Library of Congress website “underscores the importance of assuring the long-term preservation of that legacy for future generations.”

There are now some 450 works in the register. Last year the work of The Doors, Radiohead and Joan Baez were recognised.

This year among the 25 recordings added are John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, Santana’s second album Abraxas from 1970 and Julie London’s classic 1955 recording of Arthur Hamilton’s ‘Cry Me A River.’

Made on 9 December 1964, the Coltrane quartet – John Coltrane with pianist McCoy Tyner, double bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones – were recorded by engineer Rudy Van Gelder in his studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in what became a 33-minute suite, what Coltrane called his “humble offering to God” the suite fashioned around a simple pattern, just four notes based on the words a Love Supreme.

Four movements in all (Acknowledgment, Resolution, Pursuance, and Psalm) part of a loose spiritual journey with interconnections between the second and third parts and the first and fourth the record, issued by the now Universal-owned Impulse! label, means as much even more to us today in the digital age than it did on release on vinyl in 1965. This latest accolade follows on from the release last year of the Complete Masters. SG

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