In Louis Menand’s New Yorker article (in the January 11 issue, and not available online) about the life and reception of Andy Warhol, there’s this intriguing fact:
“[Tony] Scherman and [David] Dalton report that a profile of Warhol, by David Bourdon, had been scheduled for the cover of Life, but that after [Robert] Kennedy’s death the story was killed.”
Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas in 1968, and Kennedy was assassinated two days following Warhol’s attempted murder. The magnitude of Kennedy’s death understandably required a few headlines to be written and the story covered, but the bumped coverage of Warhol coincidentally tied Kennedy’s murder to that of his brother in 1963, which also had an avant-garde twist to it.
In that year, Thelonious Monk was set to bring his big band and quartet to Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) in the new Lincoln Center complex, which had opened in September of 1962. Known and respected for his leading role in the rise of bebop since the ’50s, everything seemed to be coalescing towards even more mainstream recognition, and no longer as a quizzical member of jazz’s fringe.
The Philharmonic Hall concert was scheduled for December 30, 1963. Time readied a cover feature on Monk and his music for their November 29 issue. But when John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas on November 23, coverage shifted from avant-garde art (as Monk’s was generally viewed at the time) to the more urgent matters of a nation mourning.
The 5,000-word article (“The Loneliest Monk”) covered his music and his eccentricities, and would eventually be published in February, 1964 (“sophisticates find in it affinities with Webern”). The Philharmonic Hall concert was released by Columbia in 1964, and remains in print.