In February, [Sam] Cooke premiered the song [A Change is Gonna Come] on the “Tonight Show”. Two days later, the Beatles made their historic appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show”. Southern black R&B had crossed the Atlantic and found a following among British youth, who blended it with music hall and other elements, and re-exported it to America. Cooke liked the Beatles (he considered their music “emotional”) and saw their advent as yet another opportunity to expand his market, but their impact on the fortunes of black American artists was ambivalent. Between 1955 and 1963, there had been a 50 percent increase in the number of top ten hits by black performers. By the end of 1964, however, one third of top ten hits were British. Despite the fertile crossover activity that marked the decade, it also entrenched the racial bifurcation of the American pop market, which persists to this day.
At the instigation of promoter Harold Conrad, the Beatles visited one of Clay’s training sessions in Miami. There was a brief exchange of banter and a publicity shoot which, at the time, seemed nothing more than two novelty acts trying to cash in on each other. A few days later Cooke flew to Miami to join the Clay camp. At ringside, Cooke’s new financial manager, Allen Klein (who was later to take a controversial hand in the Beatles’ finances) sat between Cooke and Malcolm X. In the mayhem that followed Liston’s defeat, an exuberant Clay interrupted a television interview to hug Cooke and proclaim him “the world’s greatest rock’n’roll singer!”
Mike Marqusee, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties