How the Allman Brothers Band Helped Make Jimmy Carter President. RIP President Carter

The Georgia-based group provided crucial early support for his 1976 White House run, creating a bond that lasted for decades.

I am saddened by the news that President Jimmy Carter has died at 100 years old. I dug very deeply into his relationship with the Allman Brothers Band for my last book, Brothers and Sisters, and thoroughly enjoyed every minute I spent doing research at the Carter Center Library in Atlanta. I was very proud to know that he read and enjoyed Brothers and Sisters.

The following story appeared in the February 25, 2023 Wall Street Journal when President carter announced he had entered hospice care. It’s remarkable that he lived almost two more years.

Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter talks to reporters while wearing an Allman Brothers Band T-shirt, July 1976. Wally McNamee

News that Jimmy Carter has died at 100 has sparked appreciation and admiration from many corners, including the fans and surviving members of the Allman Brothers Band. The group played a crucial role in his bid for the 1976 Democratic nomination and then the presidency. “The Allman Brothers helped put me in the White House by raising money when I didn’t have any,” Mr. Carter said in the documentary film “Jimmy Carter: Rock and Roll President.”

As the then-governor of Georgia began his presidential campaign in early 1974, the Macon, Ga.-based band was the most popular act in the nation, riding high on their hit album “Brothers and Sisters” and its smash single “Ramblin’ Man.” The band’s co-frontman Gregg Allman was emerging as a national celebrity, a status sealed by his 1975 marriage to Cher.

Mr. Carter’s friendship with the band began in January 1974, when he hosted a reception for Bob Dylan and the Band following an Atlanta performance. The members of the Allman Brothers Band were invited, but none of them made it—at least while the guests were still there. In a 1987 interview with Kirk West, the band’s official archivist, Gregg Allman recalled that when he finally rolled up in a limousine, the lights were being turned off. As he was getting back into the car to drive the 90 miles back to Macon, a guard called after him and said the governor was waiting for him.

The limousine was waved ahead, and Allman saw Mr. Carter standing on the porch of the darkened house wearing a pair of Levi’s and a T-shirt, barefoot and with a baseball cap on his head. The governor greeted Allman and then surprised him by saying, “Come on in. I got some new Elmore James albums we can listen to.” As they walked inside, Mr. Carter praised Allman’s songwriting and started “rattling off the lyrics” to his songs. The governor was an educated, appreciative fan, and if he was consciously wooing the rock star, he was doing a good job of it.

Gregg Allman (left) and Jimmy Carter at a campaign fundraiser in Atlanta, February 1976. Photo: Jerome McClendon/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Associated Press

Allman recalled that they had a drink together and then the governor said, “By the way, I’m running for president.” It seemed absurd to Allman that this guy sipping scotch and listening to deep blues might become president of the United States, but he truly liked Mr. Carter, admiring his gumption and “just folks” appeal.

When Mr. Carter said he “may need some money down the road,” the rock star promised to bring the request to his bandmates. “It was a friendship thing for me,” Allman said. “If he told me he needed money to open used car lots, I probably would have helped him.”

The band’s biggest assist to the Carter campaign was a benefit concert they performed on Nov. 25, 1975, at Rhode Island’s Providence Civic Center. Journalist Geraldo Rivera emceed, introducing the candidate to the crowd as “an honest, open progressive politician.” Speaking to a smattering of boos, Mr. Carter raised his arms in the air and said simply, “I have just four things to tell you. My name is Jimmy Carter. I’m running for president. I need your help. I’m gonna win. And now I want to introduce some very good friends of mine from Macon, Georgia…the Allman Brothers.” The crowd erupted in cheers.

Carter strategist Hamilton Jordan later wrote in his memoir “A Boy From Georgia” that the Allman Brothers Band’s shows were “the critical effort [that] established the campaign and kept it going financially when no one knew who [Carter] was.”

There were risks for a politician in being associated with debauched rock musicians, but the rock and roll connection helped Carter broaden his appeal beyond his strait-laced, born-again Christian image. At a press conference before the Providence concert, Mr. Carter declared, “I’m proud of my relationship with the Allman Brothers Band. They are good people, they are my friends, and 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.”

Jimmy Carter secured the Democratic nomination on the last day of the primary season, June 9, 1976. That same day, the FBI took Gregg Allman into custody to ensure he did not skip town before a drug trial in which he had been called as a witness. Allman testified in federal court against his security man John Charles “Scooter” Herring, who was found guilty on five counts of conspiracy to possess narcotics with the intent to sell.

Initially sentenced to 75 years in prison, Herring eventually won an appeal and served 30 months. But to the public, Gregg Allman remained the rat who testified against his friend to save his own hide. It was the final straw that broke the back of the Allman Brothers Band. Most of his fellow members publicly said they would never play with him again; Rolling Stone magazine suggested that he might never perform again.

Two years later the band reunited, and Allman’s bandmates apologized for not better understanding the situation. Jimmy Carter never had to apologize, because the person with the most obvious reason to abandon Allman never did. When Cher gave birth to their son Elijah Blue on July 10, 1976—three weeks after the trial and two days before the Democratic convention—Mr. Carter called the couple with congratulations.

From left: Jimmy Carter, Allman Brothers Band manager Phil Walden, producer Johnny Sandin, and co-frontman Dickey Betts at the Capricorn Records studio in 1974. Photo: Herb Kossover

His political opponents didn’t fail to notice. Phil Walden, the manager of the Allman Brothers Band and the owner of its record label, Capricorn Records, was a longtime Carter ally who served on the campaign’s national finance and steering committees. The concerts he helped organize by the Allman Brothers, the Marshall Tucker Band and others were crucial campaign fundraisers, and Walden believed to the end that the drug probe was really an attempt to smear Mr. Carter by association. New Times magazine featured a cover illustration of a Bible-toting Carter standing with Walden, while Allman held a cocaine spoon to his nose. The cover line read, “Jimmy’s friends in rock. Phil Walden, Macon’s Music man, helped shape Carter’s rise. Can he survive Gregg Allman’s Fall?”

It would have been politically expedient for Mr. Carter to distance himself from the entire Capricorn Records family, but he appreciated the support they provided when he was a little-known candidate. Mr. Carter attended the label’s annual picnic on Aug. 19, 1976, at the height of the election, walking through a surging crowd with Walden. Speaking to reporters, he praised the label and its stars for their connection to young people.

“Jimmy Carter didn’t mind being seen with us at all, despite being set up for ridicule by his opponents for hanging out with a bunch of hippie drug users,” a grateful Gregg Allman told Kirk West. When Allman received an honorary degree from Macon’s Mercer University in 2016, Mr. Carter was there to present it. On June 3, 2017, the ex-president returned to Macon to attend his friend’s funeral.

This essay is adapted from my book “Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band and the Album That Defined the 70s,” (St. Martin’s Press).

The paperback edition of my fourth book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was recently released by St. Martin’s Press. It was the third consecutive one to debut in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band, was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer with two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.