Fact #14957

Art Blakey : When we hit Japan in 1960 or 61, I never saw anything like it. There were 7,000 heads going up and down at the same time and humming every note of everything we played…. When we first went to Japan, they had Lee Morgan shirts, Wayne Shorter overcoats, all that kind of stuff in the department stores. The same kind of publicity The Beatles got in the U.S., we got in Japan, and plus. I think we're the only American artists that had an audience with the emperor, but this country never said a word about it, never a word.
(Source : not known)