‘Jimmy Carter 100’ Concert Unites the B-52’s, Drive-By Truckers, India Arie in Atlanta

“Music brings people together. We need that now more than ever,” the 39th president’s grandson Jason Carter said at the centennial birthday celebration

Jimmy Carter loves music, and last night at Atlanta’s historic Fox Theatre an unlikely cast of admirers let the “rock and roll president” know they love him too.

Carter, who turns 100 on Oct. 1., was at home in Plains, Ga., but that didn’t stop Angelique Kidjo, the B-52s, BeBe Winans, Carlene Carter, Chuck Leavell, D-Nice, Drive-By Truckers, Duane Betts, Eric Church, Gtrouplove, India Arie, Lalah Hathaway, the War And Treaty, the Rickey Minor Band, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus from celebrating what Carter’s life and presidency means to them.

Since leaving the White House in January 1981, Jimmy Carter has promoted peace, fair elections, and disease eradication with the Carter Center. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 and built homes for Habitat for Humanity along with former first lady Rosalynn, who died last year. But Carter’s stamp on popular culture is also linked to the songs that inspired him — and got him elected.

From an 1835 hymn to a 1930 Hoagy Carmichael classic, Xhosa lyrics from South Africa and 1970s Allman Brothers Band jams, “Jimmy Carter 100: A Celebration in Song” demonstrated the strong connections between the music in Carter’s life and his global reach as a humanitarian leader.

The evening kicked off with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus’ stirring rendition of “America the Beautiful,” followed by a welcome from Jason Carter, Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Carter Center, and a mini supercut of 2020 documentary film, Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President.

Although both Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, friends of the Carter family, could not attend the event, their cameos in the film drew applause before Grouplove bounded onto the stage to make it clear that Carter’s influence indeed spans parts of two centuries. After playing their 2011 hit, “Tongue Tied” in front of a pulsating backdrop of planets, the band told the audience they were the first to be certified “climate positive” by the United Nations after admiring Carter as an “environmental god” because of his hand in the U.S. Department of Energy and expansion of national parks.

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D-Nice, the optimistic DJ who kept so many Americans dancing during the pandemic with his live Instagram broadcasts, revved up the crowd with a short set of Gen-X favorites, including “I Wish” by Stevie Wonder, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January, 1977, the same week Carter was inaugurated.

Dr. Bernice King, CEO of the King Center and daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, took the stage to draw similarities between Jimmy Carter and her father — they both won the Nobel Peace Prize and Grammy awards for spoken word recordings while pursuing missions for human rights advocacy and action, noting that messages of peace, love and nonviolence from the King and Carter families have permeated the moral conscience of the city of Atlanta for more than fifty years.

Birthday dispatches from stars on video were interspersed throughout: the Indigo Girls sang “Happy Birthday”; Dave Matthews praised Carter “for your position of the Israeli /Palestine issue and your courage to speak to it”; Actor Sean Penn said the world needed a “shot” of Carter [like medicine] in order to keep going; and TV host Jon Stewart joked that he’d be sure to attend President Carter’s 200th birthday, “because it will happen.” Other contributors included Wonder Woman‘s Lynda Carter, Jeff Daniels, Nile Rodgers, Martin Sheen, Bonnie Raitt, and Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.

On stage, Renee Zellweger talked about the love story between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, calling their first encounter as infants in Plains, Ga., “a whole new spin on meet cute.” Monica Pearson, a longtime Atlanta TV anchor, spoke about exchanging notes with President Carter as they both battled cancer.

Legendary Georgia musician Chuck Leavell, who has served as the Rolling Stones’ music director since 1982, joined the Allman Brothers Band at age 20 and went on to help Jimmy Carter be elected president in 1976, dueted on “Blue Sky” and “Jessica” with Duane Betts, son of former ABB guitarist Dickey Betts who died earlier this year. Strobe lights accentuated the groove as Leavell leapt off his seat to riff on the keys and the younger Betts nailed the guitar solos on his gold Gibson.

Women ruled the evening with powerhouse performances: Singer Lalah Hathaway sang a breathtaking version of “Here’s to Life,” the contemplative 1992 ballad popularized by jazz great Shirley Horn. The electric Angeligue Kidjo roused the audience to its feet for “Africa” and “Pata Pata,” songs representing the continent where much of the Carter Center’s work happens. Carlene Carter, accompanied by Betts and Leavell, engaged the crowd in a soulful singalong of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” as popularized by her grandmother Maybelle Carter. And the regal India Arie asked the audience to pay attention to the lyrics of “What if?,” her 2019 song that honors the bravery of Black historical figures fighting for rights and equality.

The duo of Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter, better known as the War and Treaty, stunned the crowd with their vocal prowess, blues vibes and cowboy-glam of “Hey, Pretty Moon” and “Called You By Your Name.” Gospel singer BeBe Winans, encircled by the Spelman College Glee Club, sang the praise tune, “All to Thee” as someone in the audience yelled out, “Glory!” The Drive-By Truckers, based in Athens, Ga. and led by Patterson Hood, played 2008’s “The Righteous Path” and a cover of 1974’s “Keep on Smilin’” by Wet Willie, who toured as an opening act for the Allman Brothers band. The B-52s and the Rickey Minor Band shone the house lights on the rafters, where every last patron shimmied to “Love Shack” and “Rock Lobster.”

Presidents Biden, Obama, G.W. Bush and Clinton appeared via video, each with his own message about Carter’s contributions to democracy and humanity. While Clinton said he believed “We all do better when we work together,” Obama spoke of Carter’s “fundamental decency and great taste in music,” saying Carter was proof that “We are all created in God’s image” and “nothing brings us together like the power of a great song.”

Jimmy Carter 100 may have been fashioned as a multigenre celebration of Carter’s life and work as he approaches his 100th birthday, but what it transpired to be is a portrait of American culture at its best yet most vulnerable. The importance of shared values was a theme carried throughout the concert — from the videos of four presidents voicing their wishes for the world they and Carter helped shape to the slideshows of Carter as a young boy on a farm, later in uniform marrying his sweetheart, as a governor, a president, and a peacemaker set to Norah Jones’ version of the 1998 Gene Scheer song, “American Anthem.”

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Before all the artists returned to the stage for a finale of “Georgia on My Mind,” Leavell sat in to accompany country superstar Eric Church on the Allman Brothers Band’’s “Midnight Rider” and “Ramblin’ Man,” rounding out the tunes by President Carter’s favorite Georgia band. During the interlude, Eric Church said he had been given a playlist of songs by the Carter family and chose to perform 1973’s “American tune” by Paul Simon.

“We come on the ship they call the Mayflower/ We come on the ship that sailed the moon, We come in the age’s most uncertain hours, and sing an American tune,” he sang, summing up the promise and hope of the American experiment that Jimmy Carter is still rooting for.