condition (records/cover): NM / NM

Insert and obi included.

The 1961 Japanese tour, a genuinely historic event - the Messengers were greeted in Japan like heads of state, mobbed at the airport, and the visit ignited a love affair between that country and this music that has never cooled. Art Blakey with Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Timmons and Jymie Merritt, captured live across two LPs on the Japanese Baybridge label. The band plays like it knows the occasion matters: long, generous versions, the hits and the deep book, everyone digging in. As a document of why Japan became the world's great jazz-collecting nation, it is almost a founding text. Double LP, Japanese pressing, obviously.