Jimmy Carter was 52 when he started his presidency. But he embraced the music of the next generation: rock and soul.
He counted Bob Dylan among his close friends. The Allman Brothers kick-started his presidential campaign with fund-raising concerts. Aretha Franklin made her first appearance at a presidential inaugural when she sang “God Bless America” for Mr. Carter in 1977.
Willie Nelson, who became another of Mr. Carter’s longtime friends, smoked marijuana — with Mr. Carter’s son Chip — when he stayed overnight at the White House. The Carter administration clearly had loosened up Washington formality.
Mr. Carter’s musical connections were a confluence of strategy, generational change and forthright appreciation. As a Southerner who grew up in an era of segregation, he understood firsthand how music could draw together disparate constituencies and open lines of communication. Across class, race and culture, his politics strove to be inclusive. Music helped.
While he was governor of Georgia, Mr. Carter found an ally in Phil Walden, who founded Capricorn Records, the Macon, Ga., label that was a crucible of 1970s Southern rock. Capricorn’s roster, including the Allman Brothers and Marshall Tucker, provided crucial early support, and some youth credibility, for Mr. Carter’s presidential campaign. So did other hitmakers like Jimmy Buffett, Charlie Daniels and John Denver. Mr. Carter, unlike some politicians in the 1970s, was willing to be seen with longhaired hippie types.
But Mr. Carter’s ties to music went beyond expediency. Brought up as a Southern Baptist, he soaked up the gospel songs that are a foundation of 1960s and 1970s soul, country and rock. Although he was born in 1924, well before the rock ’n’ roll era, Mr. Carter bonded with his children through their favorite music. And by all accounts he was a genuine fan.
When Gregg Allman first visited the Georgia governor’s mansion — arriving quite late to a reception in honor of Mr. Dylan’s 1974 concerts in Atlanta — Mr. Carter poured him a Scotch and they listened to an album by the bluesman Elmore James.
Interviewed in the 2020 documentary “Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President,” Mr. Dylan said that Mr. Carter quoted his lyrics to him when they met. “It was the first time that I realized my songs had reached into, basically, into the establishment world,” Mr. Dylan said. “I had no experience in that realm — never seen that side — so it made me a little uneasy. He put my mind at ease by not talking down to me and showing me that he had a sincere appreciation of the songs that I had written.”
In his acceptance speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, Mr. Carter quoted Mr. Dylan to insist that America was “busy being born.”
While in the White House, Mr. Carter welcomed musicians and presented concerts: country, gospel, classical and jazz, with performers including Loretta Lynn, the Staple Singers, Arthur Rubenstein and Vladimir Horowitz. It was an example most of his successors would follow, bringing pop celebrity and entertainment value to the seat of American government.
In 1978, Mr. Carter presented an all-star jazz concert to the White House South Lawn. Its lineup of artists spanned the history of jazz, from the ragtime of Eubie Blake to the avant-garde of Ornette Coleman. As an encore, Mr. Carter — the former peanut farmer — joined Dizzy Gillespie to deliver the two-word chorus of a bebop standard: “Salt Peanuts.”
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