Why Jimmy Carter thinks he owes his presidency to The Allman Brothers Band
Long before Tony Blair courted Noel Gallagher and the Britpop movement, Jimmy Carter had recognised the immense pulling power of rock ‘n’ roll. Ordinarily, you might not expect a Georgian veteran who was born in the 1920s and ran a peanut farm to have anything to do with electrified guitar music, but according to the former president, he couldn’t have gotten to where he did without an unlikely source: The Allman Brothers Band.
Carter is a fascinating figure outside of being the only president to live 100 years. A lifelong Democrat and opponent of racial segregation – rare for a white man from the deep south – his views and support of the civil rights movement earned him much support, and he became the governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. Known as a dark horse when running in the Democratic presidential primaries, he took advantage of incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon being embroiled in the Watergate Scandal. He won the 1976 election, beating Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford.
As America has always been a greatly polarised society, Carter’s legacy varies depending on who you ask. Memorably, he pardoned all Vietnam War draft dodgers on only his second day in office and instituted a national energy policy that included new technological innovations, price control, and, far ahead of his time, conservation. However, the positive moves he took were overshadowed by a catastrophic end of a tenure that included the Iran hostage emergency, the energy crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Nicaraguan Revolution and the Three Mile Island accident.
After a chapter of a welcomed cooling in relations – détente – between America and its age-old rival for global hegemony, the Soviet Union, at the start of the decade, Carter escalated tensions again following the invasion. This saw him impose a grain embargo against the Soviet Union and proclaim the ‘Carter Doctrine’ in January 1980, where he maintained that the US would be prepared to use force to assist its allies in the Persian Gulf.
Carter’s time as executive then came to a disastrous end when he lost the 1980 election to a landslide victory from the Republican nominee, former B-list actor Ronald Reagan. Things had changed dramatically for him in just four years, and when he was fast rising as the man to get the Democrats back in the White House, he had earned many prominent supporters, including The Allman Brothers Band.
Carter was always a multifaceted personality, and his love of rock ‘n’ roll pointed to his forward-thinking mindset. Naturally, being from Georgia and loving guitar music led him to be a fan of southern rock pioneers The Allman Brothers Band, who were based in Macon. When the group first emerged, they were led by vocalist Gregg Allman and his brother Duane, a slide guitar maestro, and they had cemented their status with breezy classics such as ‘Whipping Post’ and ‘Melissa’.
While the influential Duane, who had also played in Derek and the Dominos with Eric Clapton and had taught the Eagles guitarist Don Felder the slide guitar, tragically died in a motorcycle accident in 1971, The Allman Brothers Band continued moving forward. They continued to be majorly successful during the middle of the decade, playing to some of their biggest-ever crowds. However, a tour lasting from the summer of 1975 to May of the following year saw them start to fall apart due to the stresses of being on the road, mediocre performances and heightened drug abuse.
Gregg Allman later stated that the tour’s only “high point” was the November 25th benefit show for Carter’s presidential campaign at the Providence, Rhode Island Civic Center. Before that night, his campaign had been worryingly low on funds, but the show allowed him to earn money both directly from it and through the influence of The Allman Brothers Band, spreading his message to fans who were hitherto in the dark about his efforts. The Allman Brothers Band Big House Museum in Macon even includes a thank you letter from Carter to the group.
It’s moments like these that saw Carter be dubbed ‘The Rock ‘n’ Roll President’. Not only was he elected the following year, but he continued his friendship with the band and received a degree from Mercer University alongside Gregg in 2016.
