Jimmy Carter is widely acknowledged as the first president to effectively use music and musicians to help propel himself into office.
But the way he harnessed the star power of artists such as Bob Dylan, Greg Allman and Willie Nelson never appeared transactional or cynical, and also predated those other musical presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
From his earliest years growing up in rural Georgia, music was a constant in Carter’s life. Quite simply, he was a fan (although he was never a performer).
The music he was first exposed to was gospel. Raised as a Southern Baptist, his affinity for the music from the black churches of Plains, Georgia, along with his lifelong position as an anti-segregationist, has been credited in part for his overwhelming popularity with black voters.
Later, after he became governor of Georgia and was mulling a run for the presidency, Carter’s musical tastes had expanded to encompass a wide range of genres, from country and blues to jazz and rock ’n’ roll.
And, along with much of the country, he had become a particular fan of Georgia group The Allman Brothers Band. After Greg Allman visited the governor’s mansion in 1974, he agreed to do some fund-raising gigs for Carter’s campaign, which was just about broke.
“It was the Allman Brothers that helped put me in the White House by raising money when I didn’t have any money,” Carter said in a 2020 documentary Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President.
If there was a political risk in associating himself with long-haired counterculture figures such as the Allmans, Carter didn’t seem to care.
