Who was the first musician to run for US President?
Whether as a means of political protest or the ego-maniacal after-effects of a lengthy cocaine binge, the pages of musical history in the United States are awash with artists who, at one point or another, have set their sights on acquiring the presidency. None, of course, have been successful in their aims, but that hasn’t stopped many of them from trying.
In recent memory, Kanye West – or Ye, as he prefers to be known – is perhaps the most notable figure to make a bid for the presidency back in 2020, running on some paper-thin and often contradictory policies largely centred around an ethos of traditional Christian conservatism. This was, after all, narrowly before West went off the deep end when it came to his outspoken support of Nazism, and his repeated anti-semitic rampages. Nevertheless, Ye is far from being the only delusional musician to run for office.
Waka Flocka Flame, Joe Walsh, and even Ozzy Osbourne have made some attempt at breaking into the realm of American politics, although in Ozzy’s case, his determination was largely a passing, satirical comment. Meanwhile, in the realm of punk, former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra narrowly missed out on the chance to be the Green Party’s presidential nominee in 2000.
One of the first serious attempts at a rock star running for office, however, came in 1972, when shock rock hero Alice Cooper announced his presidential campaign. Largely a promotional tool for Cooper’s single ‘Elected’, the campaign was rather short-lived and – spoiler alerts for anybody who has been asleep for the past 50 years – Cooper failed to curb Richard Nixon’s landslide victory that particular year.
Even before Alice Cooper hit the airwaves, though, there was another musician who boldly chose to run for office, and it wasn’t merely a promotional tool, or an exercise in ego, either. Dizzy Gillespie, as well as being one of the greatest jazz trumpeters to ever revolutionise the airwaves, aimed to revolt against the political establishment of America back in 1964, entering the race for the presidency.
Alongside Gillespie, his proposed cabinet included fellow musicians like Miles Davis as Director of the CIA, Max Roach as Secretary of Defence, and Duke Ellington as Secretary of State, among various others. There was, obviously, a degree of satire to the bid, marked by comedian Phyllis Diller as Gillespie’s running mate, but the campaign was also rooted in Black Power activism.
During that time, in the mid-1960s, many jazz artists – Louis Armstrong being one key example – were marched around the globe at the behest of the CIA on some kind of propaganda mission, all the while Black people in the United States were still subjected to horrific institutionalised racism on a daily basis.
Although Dizzy Gillespie pulled out of the race in the end, his short-lived campaign was still a landmark moment, both in the history of jazz and in the Black Power movement of the era, led largely by Malcolm X, who appeared in Gillespie’s proposed cabinet as Attorney General. Instead of making his campaign entirely into some promotional joke, he spoke out against the acceleration of the Vietnam War, as well as advocating for the ongoing fight for Civil Rights.
Not only was Dizzy Gillespie the first musician to run for the US presidency, but he also had perhaps the most important campaign run of them all. Maybe, somewhere out there, there is an alternate timeline in which the trumpeter beat out Lyndon B Johnson and ascended to the White House back in 1964.
