How rock stars helped put Carter in the White House

Jimmy Carter’s connection to the likes of Bob Dylan and The Allman Brothers forged his outlook on society and allowed him to grab the national spotlight

- Kevin EG Perry

On Saturday, 4 May 1974, Jimmy Carter took the stage at the University of Georgia School of Law to address an audience that included lawyers, journalists and the Democratic Party luminary Ted Kennedy. At the time, Carter was governor of Georgia but could not run for reelection, so was starting to mull a longshot bid to become the next President of the United States. He used his speech to tear into the justice system in his own state and other parts of the country, arguing bluntly that it favored the rich and powerful at the expense of everybody else.

Carter explained he got his understanding of justice from two sources. One was the work of the American Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. “The other source of my understanding about what’s right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan,” said Carter. “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 modern society.”

Half a century before Kamala Harris embraced “brat summer”, it was pretty unusual for a prospective American president to align themselves with a musician in such a prominent way. Yet Carter – who died at the age of 100 on Sunday (29 December) – wasn’t shy about declaring how much he’d learned about American society by listening to Dylan records. “I grew up as a landowner’s son,” he continued. “But I don’t think I ever realised the proper interrelationship between the landowner and those who worked on a farm until I heard Dylan’s record, ‘I Ain’t Gonna Work on Maggie's Farm No More."