Dizzy for President!

[BFrank]

Dizzy for president!

- John Fordham

Wednesday October 20 2004

The Guardian

American politics could have turned out very differently if a little-known presidential campaign of the mid-1960s had been able to vault the millionaires-only hurdle. Duke Ellington could have been secretary of state, Max Roach could have been running the military, and the CIA might have been under the thumb of that master of subterfuge, Miles Davis himself.

The presidential candidate offering these irresistible alternatives was the trumpeter and bebop pioneer John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, who declared himself a runner in 1964, up against Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater. As well as a potential cabinet of jazz all-stars, Gillespie's ticket advocated US withdrawal from Vietnam, putting African-American astronauts into space, and renaming the White House the Blues House.

The short-lived Gillespie presidential run is being celebrated from now until voting day 2004 at the Soho Theatre in London, in American actor Jake Broder's Vote Dizzy! Broder is better known for his devotion to the late satirist, surrealist and all-round subversive Richard "Lord" Buckley, whose influence has been audible in artists from Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor to Robin Williams and Captain Beefheart. Though Broder's Lord Buckley show provides much of the fuel for Vote Dizzy!, the impetus of the 2004 election has turned it into a hybrid of Buckley material and Gillespie campaign-trail anecdote, with live jazz, spoof political conventions and John Hendricks's original Vote Dizzy! election song (performed by vocalist David Tughan) thrown in.

Gillespie got his nickname from his habit of taking a joke a long way, but he never meant the presidential gag to get as far as it did. In 1963 he had marketed "Dizzy for President" badges to raise money for Core (Congress for Racial Equality), and a variety of civil rights projects under Dr Martin Luther King's direction. But his fans were so keen on the idea, he decided to run with it. Shortage of cash forced Gillespie out of the race long before polling day, but not before fans had had a chance to preach their favourite gospel - that if the world's leaders understood the open, collectively motivated, border-crossing language of jazz, nobody would be rich, but nobody would mind and the world might be safer and saner.

"When you dig under the surface of most comedy," Broder says, "you often find anger and fury. But not with Lord Buckley and not with Dizzy. Dig into there and you just find love. They were tilting at windmills, but aren't we all?"

[Rooster_Ties]

Anybody remember when Frank Zappa was thinking about running for President too??? There was a pretty lengthy interview I read somewhere with Frank, mostly all about what his campaign might have been like, and his positions on things. (He was mostly a Libertarian, at heart -- if I remember right.)

Would have been interesting if he had.

Here's a link to an interview with Zappa (not sure this is the same one I remember, though), but mostly about this very topic.

Link: Frank Zappa for president!!

Edited October 21, 2004 by Rooster_Ties