Southern rock, White House joints: How music shaped Carter’s career

In January 1974, Jimmy Carter — then the governor of Georgia — hosted a post-concert reception for Bob Dylan at the Governor’s Mansion in Atlanta. Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers Band was on the guest list, but he had been rehearsing in Macon an hour and a half away and arrived after midnight to barely make it in the door.

That night, though, Carter and Allman became fast friends who bonded over blues records by Elmore James (the two differed in recalling how much Scotch they drank). While the Allmans were a multiracial group of long-haired hippies and not beloved in most halls of power, Carter was a deep-cut fan and quoted the band’s lyrics back to Allman. The Allmans’ manager Phil Walden had built his career in Macon, Ga., and the band’s label Capricorn Records would soon throw some of the first fundraising concerts that seeded Carter’s long-shot bid for the U.S. presidency.

“The Allman Brothers helped put me in the White House by raising money when I didn’t have any money,” Carter later recalled.

The former president, who died Sunday at 100, was a lifelong music fan, inspired and deeply moved by his era’s rockers, gospel singers and country songwriters who often returned the affection onstage and at the White House. His tastes in rock and pop music were a subtle but unmistakable gesture toward racial reconciliation and, as evidenced by his support of the National Endowment for the Arts later, a vision of a diverse and inclusive American culture.

Well before Kamala Harris was “Brat” and Barack Obama was a Spotify tastemaker, Carter, as one documentary labeled him America’s first “Rock & Roll President.”

Carter grew up with gospel music in the church, telling the Washington Post that it was “not a racial music … it’s a music of pain, of longing, of searching, of hope, and of faith.” His reputation as a president conversant in rocker counterculture, though, was noticed by the era’s preeminent gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson.

Thompson was on assignment for Rolling Stone to cover Ted Kennedy’s nascent presidential campaign in 1974 but caught Carter giving “a king hell bastard of a speech,” and “by the time it was over he had rung every bell in the room,” as Thompson wrote.

While it seems at odds with his devout, peanut-farming reputation, Carter’s countercultural credibility helped build the coalition that won him the White House. In 1976, as he accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency, America was coming out of a contentious and mistrustful era of Watergate and the Vietnam War. Carter took the occasion to quote his beloved Dylan in search of hope and optimism.

“My vision of this nation and its future has been deepened and matured during the 19 months that I’ve have campaigned among you for president. I‘ve never had more faith in America than I do today,” Carter said. “We have an America that, in Bob Dylan’s phrase, is ‘busy being born,’ not ‘busy dying.’ ”

Carter was fond of quoting Dylan. He’d said in a 1974 speech: “After listening to his records about ‘The Ballad of Hattie Carroll’ and ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘The Times, They Are a-Changing,’ I’ve learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modem society.” Years later, Carter introduced the singer at MusiCares’ Person of the Year ceremony in 2015.

Dylan was one of many musicians who came to trust in Carter’s tastes and moral compass.

The Band covered “Georgia on My Mind” on “Saturday Night Live” in support of Carter just before the 1976 election and later released a studio version. At an event for Carter’s inauguration in 1977, Aretha Franklin sang “God Bless America.” While at the inaugural concert, Paul Simon said onstage, “Perhaps a time of righteousness and dignity may be upon us,” and David Crosby told Rolling Stone that Carter was “so intelligent that he knows how to be human and accessible and real. It’s sheer genius.” Even the right-wing singer-musician Charlie Daniels called Carter “a good man… He brought some credibility back to the office of the presidency” in 2014.

In 1978, Carter hosted a star-packed jazz concert on the south lawn of the White House, where he hopped onstage with Dizzy Gillespie and drummer Max Roach for the famous two-word chorus of “Salt Peanuts.”

Carter loved jazz and touted the pioneering free-jazz pianist Cecil Taylor in interviews. For a former Georgia governor just a few years removed from the heat of the civil rights era, it was a significant gesture of solidarity and respect for a defining Black art form.

Perhaps most famously — if apocryphally — in 1980, after performing for Carter in the Rose Garden, Willie Nelson claimed he sparked a joint while sitting on the roof of the White House. In his autobiography, Nelson wrote, “Sitting on the roof of the White House in Washington, DC, late at night with a beer in one hand and a fat Austin Torpedo in the other, I drifted into a reflective mood. Nobody from the Secret Service was watching us — or if they were, it was with the intention of keeping us out of trouble instead of getting us into it.”

(Nelson clarified that Carter was not present for this, as it was Carter’s son Chip up on the roof with Nelson that night. )

In the 2020 documentary “Rock & Roll President,” which also featured interviews with Nelson, Jimmy Buffett and Bono, Dylan said that Carter was “a simple kind of man, like in the Lynyrd Skynyrd song. He takes his time, doesn’t live too fast. Troubles come, but they will pass. Find the woman, and find love, and don’t forget there’s always someone above. There’s many sides to him. He’s a nuclear engineer. Woodworking carpenter. He’s also a poet. He’s a dirt farmer. If you told me he was a race car driver, I wouldn’t even be surprised.”

On news of his death, many musicians wrote heartfelt tributes to Carter.

“President Jimmy Carter was a truly extraordinary man and a rare politician who always stood up and spoke out for idealism, compassion and human rights and particularly for the rights of women and those who suffered real oppression,” wrote singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel, a longtime friend who respected Carter’s peace advocacy, particularly his 2007 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”

“Rest easy, Mr President. I’m sad for us, and happy for you. Your and Mrs. Rosalynn’s legacy of love will live forever,” wrote country singer Trisha Yearwood, who with her husband, Garth Brooks, worked on the 2024 Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project with the housing charity Habitat for Humanity.

Heart singer-guitarist Nancy Wilson called Carter “an incredible bridge between policy and our humanity,” and the Georgia rapper Killer Mike, wrote on social media that “I am honored to say I have known a ‘Good Man’ who truly made a difference in a wicked world.”

Carter may yet earn one last piece of music history. Come Feb. 2, he’s up for his fourth Grammy win, for audio book, narration, and storytelling recording, for “Last Sundays In Plains: A Centennial Celebration.”