Dizzy for president!: "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."
