The 'rock-and-roll president' may surprise you

Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and Gregg Allman, Feb. 2, 1976.
(Photo by Jerome McClendon, Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

Which president loved rock and roll the most? Bill Clinton? Barack Obama? Some say it was Jimmy Carter.

"Before Bill Clinton wailed on a saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show or Barack Obama invited Stevie Wonder and Prince for a private show at the White House, Jimmy Carter stood in a field, hands on his hips, clad in a T-shirt promoting the Allman Brothers Band's Win, Lose or Draw album," recalls Melissa Ruggieri for Oxford American. "It was July 1976, and Carter, feathered hair blowing in the wind, was gunning for the presidency. But there he was supporting a quintessential Southern rock band, one of his favorites, in front of the traveling national press corps."

Carter was an original diehard fan. Ruggieri writes, "Prior to a 1975 Allman Brothers benefit concert for Carter's campaign, the presidential hopeful introduced the band to a crowd in Rhode Island by remarking, 'Anybody who wants a president who doesn't like music like this, and who doesn't like people who make music like this, should just simply vote for another man,'" Ruggieri writes. "So much about this peanut farmer from teeny Plains, Georgia, was an anomaly from the start: Georgia had never produced a successful presidential candidate, and the humble Carter had never held a national office, making him a mystery to much of the country. . . . Publicly embracing the sweet and sour songs of a group of long-haired Southern firebrands wasn't a typical move for a politician.

"Maybe it wasn't apparent at the time, but Carter was positioning himself as the rock-and-roll president, the one history will remember as not only a connoisseur of the rock music of his home state, but also as a student of Bob Dylan's lyrics, a devotee of Willie Nelson's warble, an admirer of Aretha Franklin's searing soul, and a scholar of Dizzy Gillespie's mesmerizing bebop," Ruggieri writes. "While the Allmans and Carter shared an everlasting mutual affection, the band wasn't the only Southern mainstay to play at the White House. In 1978, the Atlanta Rhythm Section, the soft-rock toe-tappers 'Imaginary Lover' and 'So Into You,' performed at a cookout on the South Lawn. Johnny Cash and his family visited frequently."

"Carter's affiliation with musicians was never about a photo opportunity or a cynical underground ploy to court voters. . . . His allegiance was born out of devotion to the art," Ruggieri writes. "Carter, the Allmans, and others were small-town Southern men bringing their messages to the national stage. America took notice. . . . At the end of the Rock & Roll President documentary, Carter sits pensively in his home in Plains, circa 2018, while Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Simple Man' plays in the background. It's a fitting coda. . . . 'Music,' he says, 'is the best proof that people have one thing in common.'"