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With just her guitar, Bobbie Gentry cut a b-side demo that would become a cultural event, spawning a movie, a number-one song, an album and even an answer song!

Five Facts About "Ode To Billie Joe"

  • 1: "Ode To Billie Joe" was originally a seven minute recording with only Gentry's guitar backing the lyrics which told more of the story of what happened to Billie Joe at the Tallahatchie Bridge. After the original verson was finished, the label executives realized that this song was the better option for a single release. Thus, they went back into the studio with the string orchestra for backing and cut the song length almost in half. Cutting the length and lyrics provided the song with a mystical allure which left more to the listener's imagination about what really happened to Billie Joe.


  • 2: National debate raged about just what Billie Joe threw into the river by Chocktaw Ridge. Was it a stillborn baby? Illicet Drugs? The narrator's relationship with Billie Joe was obscured just enough to suggest that it was her and Billie Joe's baby that was pitched into the muddy waters off the Tallihatchie Bridge.


  • 3: The song went to #1 on the pop charts in August 1967 and stayed there for a month (It Knocked "All You Need Is Love," The Beatles' hit, out of the top slot). It was a top 20 hit on the country charts and made it to #13 on the charts in the U.K.


  • 4: The album from which the song came was also a top-twenty-hit.


  • 5: Gentry has said that the song is more about the family's shockingly lethargic response to Billie Joe's death. It's really about their numbness to such shocking news. "Ode To Billie Joe" (The spelling switched to "Billy Joe") was made into a major motion picture and starring Robby Benson and Glynnis O'Connor. The movie "solved" the mystery of Billie Joe's suicide; he threw the narrator's doll into the river, and commited suicide in respose to a failed homosexual affair. Another movie based on the song, Kelly Reichardt€™s "Ode", is a black & white narrative on gay sexuality, repression and teen suicide. The Beach Boys recorded an answer song to "Billie Joe", which went unreleased for years, and was found among archival material from the "Smile" sessions. Bobbie Gentry has never truly revealed just why Billie Joe killed himself within the text of her work, and cultural speculation continues. The song has since been covered by everyone from the Supremes to Flatts and Scruggs. "Ode To Billie Joe" is on the artist's album of the same name, as well as the "Ode to Billy Joe"(Notice the spelling difference) motion picture soundtrack and Gentry's greatest hits package, "Chicksaw County Child."

    Lyrics:

    It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
    I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay
    And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
    And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all remember to wipe your feet"
    And then she said "I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge"
    "Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

    And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas
    "Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits, please"
    "There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow"
    And Mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow
    Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
    And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

    And Brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe
    Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show
    And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night?
    "I'll have another piece of apple pie, you know it don't seem right"
    "I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge"
    "And now you tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

    And Mama said to me "Child, what's happened to your appetite?"
    "I've been cookin' all morning and you haven't touched a single bite"
    "That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today"
    "Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way"
    "He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge"
    "And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

    A year has come 'n' gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe
    And Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo
    There was a virus going 'round, Papa caught it and he died last Spring
    And now Mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything
    And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge

    And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge