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A range of stars from the stage, screen and sport paid tribute Tuesday to former President Jimmy Carter ahead of his 100th birthday, the eclectic lineup meant to highlight the 39th president’s emphasis on human rights and his love of music as a universal language.
«Everyone here is making history», Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, told more than 4,000 people who filled Atlanta’s Fox Theatre to toast the longest-lived U.S. executive in history. «This is the first time people have come together to celebrate the 100th birthday of an American president.»
The benefit concert, with ticket sales funding international programs of The Carter Center that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded in 1982 after leaving the White House, brought together artists that crossed generations and genres that traced back to his 1976 campaign. The concert will be aired in full on Georgia Public Broadcasting on Oct. 1, Carter’s birthday. Carter remains in hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia.
«He really was the rock-and-roll president», said Chuck Leavell, whose Georgia-based Allman Brothers Band campaigned with Carter in 1976. But more than that, Leavell said, Carter always understood music as something «that brings people together.»
Indeed, Tuesday’s run of show assembled artists as varied as India Arie singing R &B and soul draped in a resplendent purple gown; the B-52s, formed in Athens, Georgia, singing «Love Shack» and projecting psychedelic imagery across the concert hall; and the Atlanta Symphony Chamber Chorus bringing a classical and patriotic repertoire.
Former President Barack Obama, known for releasing his summer playlists on social media, marveled at the range.
«Now I have another reason to respect you», Obama said in a video message. «He has got great taste in music. . I’ve never thrown a concert that features pop, rock, gospel, country, jazz, classical and hip-hop.»
Of course, Obama noted, «Jimmy never passes up the opportunity to send a message», and several artists referenced one of Carter’s widely circulated quotes about music: «One of the things that has held America together has been the music that we share and love.»
Leavell took the stage multiple times Tuesday, reprising music he played and sang almost 50 years ago when Carter, then an underdog former Georgia governor, outpaced better-known Democrats to win his party’s nomination and the presidency in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.
