There comes a point in every nation­al elec­tion year when I reach total sat­u­ra­tion and have to tune it all out to stay sane—the non­stop streams of vit­ri­ol, the spec­ta­cles of elec­toral dys­func­tion, the ads, the ads, the ads. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. But imag­ine how dif­fer­ent­ly we could feel about pres­i­den­tial elec­tions if peo­ple like, I don’t know, Dizzy Gille­spie could get on a major tick­et? That’s what might have hap­pened in 1964 if “a lit­tle-known pres­i­den­tial cam­paign… had been able to vault the mil­lion­aires-only hur­dle.” What began as one of Dizzy’s famous prac­ti­cal jokes, and a way to raise mon­ey for CORE (Con­gress for Racial Equal­i­ty) and oth­er civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions became some­thing more, a way for Dizzy’s fans to imag­ine an alter­na­tive to the “millionaire’s‑only” club rep­re­sent­ed by Lyn­don John­son and Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter.

Gillespie’s cam­paign had “Dizzy Gille­spie for Pres­i­dent” but­tons, now collector’s items, and “Dizzy for Pres­i­dent” became the title of an album record­ed live at the Mon­terey Jazz Fes­ti­val in 1963.

A take on his trade­mark tune “Salt Peanuts,” “Vote Dizzy” was Gillespie’s offi­cial cam­paign song and includes lyrics like:

Your pol­i­tics ought to be a groovi­er thing
Vote Dizzy! Vote Dizzy!
So get a good pres­i­dent who’s will­ing to swing
Vote Dizzy! Vote Dizzy!

It’s def­i­nite­ly groovi­er than either one of our cur­rent cam­paigns. Dizzy “believed in civ­il rights, with­draw­ing from Viet­nam and rec­og­niz­ing com­mu­nist Chi­na,” and he want­ed to make Miles Davis head of the CIA, a role I think would have suit­ed Miles per­fect­ly. Although Dizzy’s cam­paign was some­thing of a pub­lic­i­ty stunt for his pol­i­tics and his per­sona, it’s not unheard of for pop­u­lar musi­cians to run for pres­i­dent in earnest. In 1979, rev­o­lu­tion­ary Niger­ian Afrobeat star Fela Kuti put him­self for­ward as a can­di­date in his coun­try, but was reject­ed. More recent­ly, Hait­ian musi­cian and for­mer Fugee Wyclef Jean attempt­ed a sin­cere run at the Hait­ian pres­i­den­cy, but was dis­qual­i­fied for rea­sons of res­i­den­cy. It’s a lit­tle hard to imag­ine a pop­u­lar musi­cian mount­ing a seri­ous pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in the U.S., but then again, the 80s were dom­i­nat­ed by the strange real­i­ty of a for­mer actor in the White House, so why not? In any case, revis­it­ing Dizzy Gille­spie’s mid-cen­tu­ry polit­i­cal the­ater may pro­vide a need­ed respite from the onslaught of the cur­rent U.S. cam­paign sea­son.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.