Bobbie Gentry – Ode To Billie Joe

A song that was intertwined with my life growing up. It sounds so genuine because I grew up with people that talked just like the characters in the song. What an epic song that Bobbie Gentry wrote. The writing was flawless in this song and her delivery was spot on. This was the ultimate story song.

Bobbie Gentry was born and raised in Mississippi and knew very well of the Tallahatchie Bridge. When Gentry was 13, she moved to Palm Springs, California to live with her mother. While attending college at UCLA, Gentry supported herself by performing at local clubs. She transferred to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and began her study of music theory and arrangement.

In early 1967, Gentry started making demos of songs that she believed she could sell to other artists to record. In July, Kelly Gordon was assigned to produce Ode To Billie Joe for the label. The track “Mississippi Delta” is the song that caught Capitol’s attention, but after the first string session with Jimmie Haskell, it was decided that the song “Ode to Billie Joe“ would be the A-side single released. A very wise choice.

The song took off that summer and that ignited the album of the same name. Ode to Billie Joe replaced the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club at the top of the Billboard 200. Gentry won three Grammy Awards in 1967 (Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.) She also took home the award for the Academy of Country Music’s Most Promising Female Vocalist.

Was the song based on a true story? No, but it was inspired by the 1954 murder of Emmett Till. Till was only 14 years old when he was shot and thrown over the Black Bayou Bridge in Mississippi for offending a woman in a grocery store.

In 1976 I remember watching the movie “Ode To Billy Joe.” Believe me, the song was much better than the movie. At the time though it wasn’t that bad. The release weekend for this movie coincided with the date from the first line of the song that inspired it: “It was the 3rd of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.”

The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, #3 in New Zealand, and #13 in the UK in 1967.

She changed her name from Roberta Lee Streeter, in tribute to the Jennifer Jones movie Ruby Gentry…her songs were almost always set in and around the Chickasaw County of her childhood, semi-mythical south, with lyrics about people who were friends and neighbors. In 1972 the wooden bridge collapsed after being set on fire by vandals but was later rebuilt.

Bobbie Gentry historical marker.

Bobbie Gentry: “The message of the song revolves around the nonchalant way the family talks about the suicide. The song is a study in unconscious cruelty.”

Bobbie Gentry:  “It’s entirely a matter of interpretation as from each individual’s viewpoint. But I’ve hoped to get across the basic indifference, the casualness, of people in moments of tragedy. Something terrible has happened, but it’s ‘pass the black-eyed peas’, or ‘y’all remember to wipe your feet.'”

Ode To Billy Joe

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, Billie Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

And papa said to mama, as he passed around the blackeyed peas
Well, Billie 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 Billie Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin’ ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billie 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-a apple pie you know, it don’t seem right
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge
And now ya 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 Billie Joe was throwing somethin’ off the Tallahatchie Bridge

A year has come and gone since we heard the news ’bout Billie 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 want to 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

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

52 thoughts on “Bobbie Gentry – Ode To Billie Joe”

  1. Great pick, Max, I love this song. I think you hit the nail on the head with calling it the ultimate story song. This tune still draws me in immediately. You literally picture the story like in a movie. To me, this is as good as it gets with a story song – just brilliant!

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      4. Yes she did…she probably made enough also to not have to worry about it again. When they make a movie of your song…you are doing good.
        Another song around this time kind of copied her style…Harper Valley PTA

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  4. I’d never heard about the Emmett Till connection – which seems like a stretch since one is about a suicide and the other a lynching. At the time the song was a hit, folks speculated about what was being thrown off the bridge. A popular theory was a fetus. I once opened my year-end letter to family and friends with “A year has come and gone since we heard the news ’bout Billie Joe.”

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    1. This song has been with me since birth….literally. It was part of my childhood. I always thought Tom T Hall was influenced by this to write Harper Valley PTA.
      I do remember the speculation about it years after it was released.

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    1. I was born in that year but when I was a kid I heard it endlessly….this and Harper Valley PTA.
      I’ll have to check the Glen Campbell – Gentry out Phil. Thank you for the tip. I always liked him…one of the best if not the best guitarist in music at the time.

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      1. The album is good. They did a song or two together when she was a guest on his Goodtime Hour tv show. Yeah, he so good he was part of the wrecking crew and the Beach Boys. My dad knew him from his days playing western swing in Albuquerque NM. My dad was playing with a band on a tv show and the Chesterfield Club. Glen played guitar in his uncles band, about 16-17 at the time. Dad said he was one hell of a guitarist, even at that age. I’m surprised that Glen didn’t record some of Bobbie’s songs, but then he had a winning team with Jimmy Webb.

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      2. I barely…but I do remember his TV show…along with Mac Davis’s show.
        I agree about the winning team with Webb…you can’t beat Wichita Lineman.

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      3. Some of those Glen Campbell songs from that time take me back to my high school days and my parents, who played his albums until the grooves were worn out. Wichita Lineman, one of the best songs to come out of the 60s. Thanks for remembering Bobbi Gentry.

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    1. It is a classic. I was born the year it was released but it was always around. That TV movie brought it back as well….I have to fight hard not to think of Robbie Benson when I hear it.

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  7. Superb single. Probably the ultimate One Hit Wonder of the ’60s. Great lyrics & playing, and after hearing it I still sometimes get taken in by the surprise ending…seems like it’s going to continue but it doesn’t, and it didn’t need to.
    I think the song’s so mysterious…as if there was something unspoken underneath the tension they all knew but wouldn’t speak. For starters, did Billy Joe really jump or was he pushed in?
    You’re right about ‘Harper Valley PTA’, another good song but sounds a lot like this.

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    1. Not many story songs like this continue on…it’s not a talking song but close…but it never loses it’s edge. What you said about it being mysterious is true and so many “ifs” are in it. It adds more mystery to the song.
      Yea Tom T Hall had to be influenced by it no doubt. Harper was released a year after this.

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  9. What a song… what a singer… The first time I saw her (I was what, 11 or 12?) I was mesmerized. The whole song is based around a C7 chord shape. She doesn’t need to change her left hand, just run it up and down the fretboard. And that story… I could see it unfold in my mind’s eye, she’s just so good at telling it….

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    1. I never tried playing that…hmm that would be interesting…you don’t hear someone play this everyday.
      It’s so genuine…it is a classic no doubt.

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  11. Great song and she did just up and disappear. I didn’t realize that she had been married to Jim Stafford and had a son.

    I suspect she made enough royalties from the bulk of her work and got tired of the music industry’s bullshit.

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      2. My last 4 or 5 or 6 (not counting the Max picks) barely if ever hit the charts. Tomorrow’s post didn’t either but people will like it.

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      4. Nothing wrong with it…but most of them…NOT including today…I’m tired of. There are a few I still like…even The Beatles number 1s…some I’m sick of.

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  15. I remember being mesmerized by the song and the story as a kid. No idea it was based on the murder of Till. Not sure if you know it, but years later the white woman he supposedly offended recanted her story. Seems to me someone was just looking for a reason to end a teenager’s life. MAKES ME SICK, as neither the killers nor the lying woman were ever held accountable — at least in this life. Karma never forgets.

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    1. I still think of Robbie Benson when I first hear it….Yea I’ve read about that before it was horrible beyond words. I couldn’t believe this song was being influenced by that.
      When I was a kid…I thought…wow these people in the song talk like people I know. Mom didn’t really have a heavy accent.

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      2. Not as much of an accent…funny mom lived down here all her life but never had a strong accent. I think she knew the sterotype and didn’t want me to have that thick accent… but it’s nothing wrong with it… She lead by example.

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  16. Hanspostcard loved this one. I hadn’t heard it before he posted about it, since it doesn’t really fit into normally classic rock/pop radio formats. My dad was into Harper Valley PTA – I think that’s her as well?

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  17. Pingback: Bobbie Gentry – Ode To Billie Joe – MobsterTiger

  19. Bobbie Gentry was a force of nature, gifted singer, songwriter and musician, Ode to … was a classic but Fancy wasn’t too far behind, she nailed the Southern Gothic like no one else in the 60’s, enjoying your blog.

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  20. Pingback: IT’S THE THIRD OF JUNE… | Mollie Hunt: Crazy Cat Lady Mysteries and more

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