Jimmy Carter Nominated for 10th Grammy Award Nearly 21 Months After Beginning Hospice Care

The former president has become the oldest Grammy nominee for his spoken word album 'Last Sundays in the Plains: A Centennial Celebration'

Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter in 2018. Photo:

Drew Angerer/Getty

Jimmy Carter has earned his 10th Grammy nomination at 100 years old.

On Friday, Nov. 8, the Recording Academy announced that the former president was nominated in the best audio book, narration, and storytelling recording category for his record Last Sundays in the Plains: A Centennial Celebration.

This nomination marks his 10th nomination and it makes him a record-breaker. At 100 years old, he has become the oldest Grammy nominee of all time, per the BBC.

"What an honor!" the Carter Foundation wrote in a post shared to X (formerly Twitter) announcing the nomination.

Carter has won three Grammys, all in the best spoken word album category. He scored wins for Faith - A Journey For All (2018), A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (2015) and Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (2005).

Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration
The cover of 'Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration.'.

Last Sundays in the Plains: A Centennial Celebration was Carter's most recent spoken-word album. Released in honor of the former president's 100th birthday, the album features recordings from Carter’s final Sunday School lesson delivered at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Ga., where he served as a teacher for years. His lectures are set to music played by Jon BatisteKeb’ Mo’LeAnn Rimes, Darius RuckerNicole Zuraitis and others.

The project's producer, Kabir Sehgal, previously told Georgia Public Broadcasting that it "is really a final culmination of President Carter's Sunday school lessons for years, for decades."

"He taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains. And I was blessed to see [his Sunday School class in person]," Sehgal said in October.

According to Sehgal, Carter's lessons accompanied by the music were a way for him to "show the love I have for President Carter's family through the music."

The former president's prayers and lessons recorded for the album reflect on several topics, including the current political climate of the U.S.

"I would like our presidential candidates to keep our country at peace, and to be champions of human rights, of environmental quality and of equality," Carter says on the recording. "Aren't those things you would like to have? It puts the responsibility on us as Americans to make our country better by helping to give somebody else a better life."

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter receives applause after delivering a lecture on the eradication of the Guinea worm, at the House of Lords on February 3, 2016 in London.
Carter in 2016.

Neil Hall-WPA Pool/Getty

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Also nominated in the audio book and narration category for the 2025 Grammy Awards are George Clinton's ...And Your Ass Will Follow, producer Guy Oldfield's All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones — from Dolly Parton and Barbra Streisand's My Name Is Barbra.

The news of Carter's nomination also comes 21 months after he entered hospice care. Though he made a rare public appearance at his late wife Rosalynn Carter’s funeral last November, Carter is "physically limited" and spends his time at home with loved ones.

"This is an important part of his faith journey, and it's one that you don't get to experience at any other time in your life except for the very end," his grandson Jason Carter told PEOPLE in September 2023, a few months after his grandfather entered hospice. "And so in that way, I think this has been a really meaningful time for him, and it's been a really reflective time for him."

The 67th Grammy Awards is set to take place live in Los Angeles at the Crypto.com Arena on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025.

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