Discuss Bobbie Gentry
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Her exceptional 1967 international hit song "Ode to Billie Joe"
posted by genplant29STAFFMOD on January 29, 2020 at 5:00 AM
I consider Bobbie Gentry's 1967 international hit song "Ode to Billie Joe" easily one of the great - not to mention most engrossing - songs of all times. And it's sung and played spot-on perfectly, in a way that ideally suits the song and its spellbinding story.
Here that song is.
From Wikipedia:
"Ode to Billie Joe" is a song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry....The single, released on July 10, 1967, was a number-one hit in the US within three weeks of release and a big international seller. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 3 song of the year....The recording remained on the Billboard chart for 20 weeks and was the Number 1 song for four weeks. // It generated eight Grammy nominations, resulting in three wins for Gentry and one for arranger Jimmie Haskell. "Ode to Billie Joe" has since made Rolling Stone's lists of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" and the "100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time"....// The song takes the form of a first-person narrative performed over sparse acoustic accompaniment, though with strings in the background. It tells of a rural Mississippi family's reaction to the news of the suicide of Billie Joe McAllister, a local boy to whom the daughter (and narrator) is connected. Hearsay around the "Tallahatchie Bridge" forms the narrative and musical hook. The song concludes with the demise of the father and the lingering, singular effects of the two deaths on the family. According to Gentry, the song is about indifference and unshared grief.
The age-old question that listeners have always been left with is, "What did the storyteller and Billie Joe throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge?" My belief has always been that it was a baby. Gentry has never stated what was thrown - though has said she personally knows. Intriguing.
Here's the full Wikipedia article, which goes in to a lot of interesting detail.
At any rate, truly great song, masterfully written and performed. It's one that a listener never forgets.
Do you have an opinion of what the storyteller and Billie Joe threw off the bridge?
Incidentally, see also Bobbie Gentry's TMDb profile page, for more about her and the very famous song.
Please check out the following list of titles and celebrities I've created TMDb threads for: https://www.themoviedb.org/list/118052
Reply by QuitePleasant
on January 29, 2020 at 7:03 PM
Agree about quality of Miss Gentry's signature song. Very interesting take and questions.
Some (across the Internet) say that Billy Joe MacAllister is Gay (mostly IMDb trolls probably), but even if so, then that's okay and also okay with the song's Narrator, but not with the audience of the day. Maybe her love is forbidden thereby by the audience of then because it would be censored, and therefore cannot be reciprocated romantically, and so they discard each other's photographs and letters into the troubled waters from the side of Tallahatchie Bridge?
From the lyrics, as well as Bobbie's biography, we fairly reasonably deduce that Choctaw Ridge is set in Mississippi (supported by what some call the western side of the State as river delta country, and also its reference to Tupelo).
Because Mississippi very often ends up in 50th place among those "Best States" lists, other states, usually the ones finishing from 49th to 40th place, often use the slogan, "Thank God for Mississippi" (because it frequently rates below theirs in opinion polls).
Therefore, maybe Billy Joe MacAllister took the Narrator on a tour of some of those states finishing from 49th to 40th place, and removed those "Thank God for Mississippi" signs to toss from the heights of Tallahatchie Bridge?
Anyhow, another site offering reader opinion hears from participants bearing other theories.... Song Meanings
This includes, of course, "Ode to Billy Joe" "Ode to Billy Joe."
This also includes, by the way, many other readers' interpretations of often misunderstood songs, such as "She Bop" and "Who Let the Dogs Out?"
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" as written by and Jim Steinman and performed by Bonnie Tyler "Total Eclipse of the Heart"
I often think of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" as one of Popular Music's all-time greatest in terms of lyrics, accompaniment and performance, and figure that its Narrator also faces a difficult decision as whether or not to acquiesce to forbidden love, leading to her decision, "Forever's Gonna Start Tonight."
"One Tin Soldier (The Legend of Billy Jack)" as written by Dennis Earle Lambert and Brian Potter "One Tin Soldier
Here, I always take this as an Anti-War ballad and figure the One Tin Soldier to have been recruited by those antogonistic Valley People, but because he's a Pacifist, he deserts the troops upon learning upon the next morning's raid on the protagonist Mountain People.
Cher has a very nice video rendition of "One Tin Soldier," animated especially for "The Sonny and Cher Show," and to medley with "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear."
Side Note - Bobbie Gentry was once married to James Stafford, who has many Country hits, including another controversial song, "My Girl Bill." "My Girl Bill" was very often misunderstood by audiences and critics alike, but if we actually listen to its lyrics, then we have to wonder what all of that dispute was all about.
Reply by genplant29
on January 29, 2020 at 9:14 PM
Outstanding post you made there, Quite! I'll comment in response to it at a different time, but for now wanted to say at least that much.
By the way, I've always been crazy about "Total Eclipse of the Heart" that you mentioned! It's epic! (And love Bonnie Tyler!) I recall that the same songwriter, Jim Steinman, also wrote the likewise superb "Making Love Out of Nothing at All", that Air Supply performed. Absolutely terrific songs, both of those!
Reply by znexyish
on January 29, 2020 at 11:35 PM
I think that Billy Joe threw a MacGuffin off that bridge. Just listened to the My Girl Bill song. I know the song is about a comma but it brought to mind Lola
Reply by genplant29
on January 30, 2020 at 3:51 AM
I just now played "My Girl Bill". I don't remember ever hearing it on my local radio stations during the '70s. Cute song. I didn't at all "get" what was going on in the song, most of the song, till towards the end finally figuring it out (thanks to you having mentioned a comma [the lack thereof], znex).
Btw, I get a kick out of reading some of the comments people leave below music videos on YouTube. Earlier, when I was watching the "Total Eclipse of the Heart" one, I cracked up (was literally LOL'ing) when I read the two following comments:
"Scientific fact: There was far more wind in the 80s than there is today."
"This music video has everything... wind.. ninjas... flowing gauze dresses, Fight scenes, Greasers, football players, sexy wet men, food fights, fencing, a choir with glowing eyes, a guy in a diaper doing the splits..."
LMAO!!!
Reply by wonder2wonder
on January 30, 2020 at 5:32 AM
I always put the two songs "Ode to Billie Joe (1967)" and "La siepe (1968)" together.
Reply by genplant29
on January 30, 2020 at 5:41 AM
For some reason I've always tended to think of Vicki Lawrence's one-hit-wonder "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" as like an afterthought of "Ode to Billie Joe". Here that song is.
Reply by wonder2wonder
on January 30, 2020 at 6:07 AM
I know what the story of "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (1972)" is about, but what is the connection with "Ode to Billie Joe (1967)"? Love and death?
Reply by genplant29
on January 30, 2020 at 6:18 AM
My mental association that links the two songs is mainly that they're both Southern gothic story songs (and from not many years apart) about rural tragedies. I've always loved story songs.
Reply by wonder2wonder
on January 30, 2020 at 7:19 AM
That's what I do too, and the lyrics are also important to me.
Bobbie sang "Ode to Billie Joe (1967)" and "La siepe (1968)" within a year of each other. The first song ended with her picking flowers and throwing them off the bridge. The second is about her leaving and saying goodbye to her mother, her friends, the trees, even to the creek.