Black Music Sunday: Celebrating jazz great ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie

Oct. 21, 2024, will mark the 107th anniversary of the birth of one of our greatest jazz musicians, known the world over as “Dizzy” Gillespie. John Birks Gillespie, born on Oct. 21, 1917, in Cheraw, South Carolina, was a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and educator who was instrumental in founding the “bebop” jazz genre, and in promoting Afro-Cuban/Latin jazz.

During this election season it’s also fun to remember that it will be 20 years since Gillespie ran for president of the United States, as a write-in candidate, documented here by The Vogue:

During the 1964 United States presidential campaign the artist, with tongue in cheek, put himself forward as an independent write-in candidate. He promised that if he were elected, the White House would be renamed “The Blues House,” and a cabinet composed of Duke Ellington (Secretary of State), Miles Davis (Director of the CIA), Max Roach (Secretary of Defense), Charles Mingus (Secretary of Peace), Ray Charles (Librarian of Congress), Louis Armstrong (Secretary of Agriculture), Mary Lou Williams (Ambassador to the Vatican), Thelonious Monk (Traveling Ambassador) and Malcolm X (Attorney General). He said his running mate would be Phyllis Diller.

Gillespie withdrew and Lyndon B. Johnson went on to win in a landslide. Gillespie continued traveling the globe, bringing jazz to a worldwide audience.

”Black Music Sunday” is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 230 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.