3. Jimmy Carter
Being from Georgia, President Jimmy Carter knows a thing or two about country radio and jukeboxes filled with classic tunes. During a fundraising event for Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C., Carter spoke of how he grew up listening to country music.
“When I grew up in Plains, Georgia, when we asked for music, we got country music,” Carter explained.
Carter also discussed how country music has told the story of America from generation to generation.
“The good songs were passed down from generation to generation, because they told stories of how ordinary people lived and felt and loved. As people moved to the cities, they wrote different songs about their own new feelings and new experiences, but even in our day country music has remained people music,” Carter said. “Now it’s sometimes composed on kitchen tables or in a hotel room or even riding along in a pickup truck or on Greyhound buses or in an 18-wheeler.”
Carter also named October as “Country Music Month.”