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 McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
Those are the opening lyrics for today’s classic song of the day, the perfect song for the third of June. The song is “Ode to Billie Joe” by Bobbie Gentry; when it was released as a single in July of 1967, this piece of swamp noir went all the way to #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100 charts and established Ms. Gentry as a major star.
Most people hear “Ode to Billie Joe,” which Bobbie Gentry wrote and sang herself, and immediately speculate on what exactly it was that the protagonist and the aforementioned Billie Joe McAllister Joe threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge—and just why, exactly, the young man committed suicide by jumping off said bridge. Did they throw flowers, a wedding ring, an infant? Bobbie Gentry herself never revealed what it was or why it was, saying that it really didn’t matter and she left it all deliberately vague.
All of which misses the point of the song. “Ode to Billie Joe” is a song about indifference and people’s inability to empathize with the tragedy of others. Notice how the family discussed Mr. McAllister’s suicide over lunch, without taking the young girl’s feelings into account. Or how the girl’s mother reacted with indifference to her husband’s death. In Bobbie Gentry’s own words, the characters in the song “isolated themselves in their own personal tragedies.” That’s really what the song is about.
Bobbie Gentry was born Roberta Lee Streeter on July 27, 1942, in Chickasaw County, Mississippi. She grew up on her grandmother’s farm without electricity or indoor plumbing. When she was thirteen years old, she moved to Palm Springs, California, and started performing onstage with her mother as Ruby and Bobbie Meyers. Ms. Gentry later took her stage name from the 1952 movie, Ruby Gentry.
After graduating from high school, Ms. Gentry moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA as a philosophy major but later transferred to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music to take a variety of music classes. She performed around town at various nightclubs and country clubs, sang backup for vocalist Jody Reynolds, and, in 1967, recorded a demo tape at Whitney Recording Studio in Glendale, California. That tape included “Ode to Billie Joe,” which she hoped Lou Rawls might record (and he would have been great for it), and it won her a contract with Capitol Records. The single you know and love is actually that demo recording, with Ms. Gentry accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, with a string sextet added for effect.
Bobbie Gentry went on to have a handful of top forty hits, including “Let It Be Me” (a duet with Glen Campbell), “Fancy” (1969), and “All I Have to Do is Dream” (another duet with Mr. Campbell). She made a lot of television appearances and even got to host her own TV variety show, The Bobbie Gentry Happiness Hour, a summer replacement for her friend Mr. Campbell’s The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.
Ms. Gentry continued recording and performing through the 1970s, but retired from the music business in 1982. She has not recorded, performed, or been interviewed since. She’s currently 83 years old.
For today’s daily bonus video of the day, here’s Bobbie Gentry performing “Ode to Billie Joe” live on the September 10, 1967, episode of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. It’s a hell of a song, really.
