Dizzy for President Button
February 1, 2012
Such an awesome pinback. It’s from 1962 and you can buy it on Etsy.
The Gillespie presidential run had first materialized as a gag, when Gillespie’s booking agency manufactured “Dizzy Gillespie for President” buttons. As the civil-rights campaign heated up in the summer of 1963, however, Gillespie decided to throw his hat into the ring, aided and abetted by jazz writer Ralph Gleason and his wife Jean. The trumpeter said that he would rename the White House “the Blues House”