BEFORE: I've got to take a slight detour into politics before I can close out the Big Summer Music series - the linking's just not there for me to get to the documentary about Tina Turner, believe me, I've tried. I suspect, however, that maybe the cast list for that HBO documentary is incomplete on the IMDB, most of the docs I've watched in the last two weeks didn't have complete cast lists, a lot of appearances via archive footage have been omitted. If the cast lists HAD been complete, I could have re-organized this chain much better, but that doesn't matter now, I've made it almost all the way through, I've got my path to the end of 2021 mapped out, so who cares? I'm just beefing up the IMDB cast lists as I go, to help out other film fans. As long as there's one solid unbroken line that gets me through the doc chain, and I'm making progress toward October. I think my back-to-school programming's going to be a little threadbare this year, but again, who cares as long as it's another "perfect year"?
Jann Wenner carries over from "The Go-Go's".
THE PLOT: Jimmy Carter's election to the presidency of the United States in 1977 was helped by the links that this pop music fan had with stars.
AFTER: I lived through the Carter years, although I was 8 years old at the time of the 1976 election, and I really wasn't into rock yet - I probably hadn't even discovered the Beatles yet, not even through the gateway drug of the "Yellow Submarine" cartoon. I knew about Jimmy Carter thanks to MAD magazine and watching a bit of the news over my grandmother's shoulder, Grams was big on the news. And I remember the July 4 celebration during the bicentennial year, but not much else from that time. I certainly didn't understand politics, and only had a vague idea who Nixon was and what his presidency had done to the country. I remember that one of my classmates had an uncle who was one of the Iranian hostages, so some people in my hometown paid close attention to what was going on in the Middle East, but that was later in Carter's presidency, this documentary gets there near the end, it was a key reason that Carter lost the election, and what a coincidence that the hostages were released THE DAY that he left Washington. Did anyone ever look into the timing of that - it's very suspicious, was Reagan pulling a fast one or was the Ayatollah just twisting the knife on Carter?
But I'm getting ahead of myself - let's start at the very beginning, I hear it's a very good place to start... Before getting elected, Jimmy Carter's campaign used rock and roll to show that he was a man of the people, with musical tastes similar to the people in the heartland, and they did this with some fund-raising concerts featuring the Allman Brothers. The Allmans were very popular then, plus they were an integrated, multi-racial band at the time, which was great for optics. Carter had also shown familiarity with the songs of Bob Dylan, who I guess was starting to fall back into favor, eventually making up for "going electric" and peaking with his Rolling Thunder tour right about then. Dylan was from Minnesota and was raised Jewish, and didn't seem to have much in common with a former peanut farmer from Georgia, but they connected on some level, and Carter quoted his favorite Dylan lyrics TO Dylan, while Dylan just wanted to talk about religion. Dylan was converting to Christianity around that time, but he didn't release his album of Christmas music until 2009. True story.
When he was running for election against Jerry Brown, it was almost a referendum on Southern rock vs. California Rock - Brown had Ronstadt and the Eagles on his side, but that kind of mellowness just doesn't win elections, I guess. But Carter liked a wide variety of music, like jazz (God knows why) and gospel, even classical, in addition to rock and pop. He even had Jimmy Buffett play a few fund-raising concerts in the Pacific Northwest, but that backfired when supporters started demanding their contributions back. I guess he played "Margaritaville" one too many times... The whole middle part of this film shows all the musical acts that came to perform at the White House during Carter's term, or just to stop in and meet the President, as he was probably one of their fans.
Of course, the other musical friend that Carter made was Willie Nelson - they both came from the South. Texas, Georgia, it's all the same, right? Willie visited the White House several times, and the story can be told now about Willie sharing pot with the President's son - hey, it's close to legal almost everywhere now, it just wasn't then. And then we're shown a Willie Nelson concert on the White House lawn, but Jimmy Carter wasn't there, because he was at Camp David, trying to broker Mideast peace between Begin and Sadat, representing Israel and Egypt. Jeez, why not take those guys to the Willie Nelson concert, maybe they'd get a contact high and be more likely to sign some peace accords? It couldn't hurt to try. As we all know, Carter eventually DID get the two men to come to terms, but sadly, he was unsuccessful in negotiating a peace treaty between Gregg Allman and Cher.
Then there was the time that the Chinese ambassador, Chai Zemin, came to Washington, but the place he really wanted to visit was Nashville - who knew that someone from Asia would be a big country music fan? A quick side-trip was arranged by the Carter administration, and the ambassador got to visit the Grand Ole Opry and meet Johnny Cash and Barbara Mandrell. Though I think he really had his heart set on meeting Dolly Parton, if you catch my drift.
It's for sure that the country needed to heal after the disastrous term of Nixon, and mild-mannered Gerald Ford just wasn't getting it done. Music is a healing force, a uniting force, and Carter used it to his advantage, to find common ground, because who doesn't like music? And rock music had turned the corner, from being a symbol of the counter-culture to being part of culture itself. Hey, Carter must be a man of the people, because he listens to the same kind of music as we do? That statement holds especially true if Carter listened to nearly every form of music, though. I'm not saying Carter was lying, but it does seem awfully convenient that he liked nearly everything, almost like he just wanted to be diplomatic and not hate anything.
I can't hate on Carter, though, because he's done so much charity work, for Habitat for Humanity and also to help eradicate Third World diseases, he may have accomplished more on a service level AFTER leaving the Presidency, and, apart from Supreme Court Justice Taft, who else can say that? He didn't just go back to his ranch and paint bad art, or move to a Florida condo just to play golf and ruin people's weddings, he's been giving back consistently for over 40 years. Let's see you build a house for somebody in need when you're 96 years old! And Carter took his 1980 election loss with grace and dignity, which is the way it's SUPPOSED to happen, not contesting the election results and spreading wacky theories about Chinese satellites interfering with voting machines or dumping votes in rivers.
As I said before, I've got one more music documentary in the Big Summer Concert series, I can get there by next weekend if I'm lucky. But this one really sort of ties everything from the last week together - Linda Ronstadt is name-checked here, Dolly Parton and Pavarotti make appearances via archive footage, and everyone from Bob Dylan, John & Yoko and Crosby, Stills & Nash came back for another appearance, all seen visiting the White House. Those were the days, I guess - the only musical acts to visit our last commander-in-grief were Kanye West, Ted Nugent and Kid Rock. Collectively, what a damn shame.
Also starring Jimmy Carter (last seen in "Pavarotti"), Madeleine Albright (last seen in "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley"), Bono (also last seen in "Pavarotti"), Garth Brooks, Jimmy Buffett (last seen in "The Beach Bum"), Rosanne Cash, Bob Dylan (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation"), Larry Gatlin (last seen in "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), Chuck Leavell, Willie Nelson (last seen in "Lost in London"), Nile Rodgers (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Paul Simon (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), George Wein, Trisha Yearwood, Andrew Young (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Tom Beard, Chip Carter, Peter Conlon, Michael Curry, John Dalton, Jim Free, Nancy Hunt, Frank Moore,
with archive footage of Muhammad Ali (also last seen in "Malcolm X"), Gregg Allman (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Warren Beatty (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Andy Warhol (ditto), Menachem Begin, George Benson, Dickey Betts, Bonnie Bramlett, Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), James Brown (also last seen in "Pavarotti"), Luciano Pavarotti (ditto), Jerry Brown (last seen in "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice"), Johnny Cash (ditto), David Crosby (ditto), Dolly Parton (ditto), Shirley Caesar, Billy Carter, Lillian Carter, Ron Carter, Rosalynn Carter (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), June Carter Cash, Ray Charles (last seen in "Quincy"), Dizzy Gillespie (ditto), Lionel Hampton (ditto), Cher (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), James Cleveland, Chick Corea, Charlie Daniels, Deng Xiaoping, John Denver (last seen in "Sound City"), Gerald Ford (last seen in "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Redd Foxx (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Aretha Franklin (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), John Lennon (ditto), Diana Ross (ditto), Dexter Gordon (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Herbie Hancock (last seen in "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets"), Vladimir Horowitz, Mahalia Jackson, Ted Kennedy (last seen in "RBG"), Ayatollah Khomeini (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Loretta Lynn, Barbara Mandrell, Glenn Miller, Charles Mingus, Walter Mondale (last seen in "Bombshell")
Graham Nash (also last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation"), Stephen Stills (ditto), Paul Newman (last seen in "Somebody Up There Likes Me"), Richard Nixon (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Yoko Ono (last seen in "Zappa"), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (the Shah of Iran), Elvis Presley (last seen in "Dolly Parton: Here I Am"), Anwar Sadat, The Staples Singers (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Hunter S. Thompson, Conway Twitty (last seen in "Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band"), Sarah Vaughan, Phil Walden, John Wayne (last seen in "Keith Richards: Under the Influence")
RATING: 6 out of 10 non-rhyming poems
No comments:
Post a Comment