BOBBIE GENTRY "ODE TO BILLY JOE" REACTION | Asia and BJ
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Bobby Gentry is my cousin. Her real name is Roberta Streeter. The point of the song is how people continue with life even when tragedy occurs. It leaves up to the listeners imagination as to what was thrown off the bridge. She has a degree in philosophy and also designed clothing.
Bobby Gentry was a well educated woman with a degree in philosophy. She wrote the song to bring people's attention to how people sit around in common situations and talk without thinking about how their conversations might affect others around them. I remember as a teenager, my mom sat me down to teach me that very lesson using this song. My mom explained how well educated Bobbie Gentry was and told me that we all need to be mindful and aware how and what we say in our everyday activities because we never know how it will affect those listening. Mom then played the song for me and had me listen to the lyrics. As a teen, I realized that the girl in the story was more than likely in love with Billy Joe and no one around her even knew it, Not her mom, dad or brother. It actually made me cry and still does today.
I don't know her or you, but it sounds to me like you've had one hell of a mom.
That's awesome. And an amazing life lesson using music. I love it. 💖🦋
My mom did too!! She told me everything you just said. I'm 36 years old.
Your Mom was vert wise. You are so fortunate.
Oh wow! Thanks for that info! Your mum seems like a smart lady! Good way to teach! Sadly people still talk and now they yell, scream with lots of foul language and a lot more hate and anger. It's getting worse and worse. I got a tough challenge for anyone who thinks they can overcome! How about for once... Just stop, sit and listen! Look around! Don't talk! Hum a tune. The goal is to see how far one can go without saying something ugly or rude. Basically! Stop and use that brain before ya open that maw to spit whatever come flying out! Instead, try to turn negative words, conversations etc into a positive song, tune, piece or art even. Turn it into something positive! It's whatever. Just an idea that I sometimes use myself to change a bad mood or day into something good. So Suzzie?! Thank you sharing ^,..,^
She knocked the Beatles off the #1 spot on the charts! Her voice is like no other. Thanks for the review!
She's storytelling - she's got us all at that dinner table with her.
Bobbie was 26 years old in this video. She's still alive and kicking at 79 years old but a bit of a recluse now. If y'all haven't done it yet you'll love Harper Valley PTA by Jeannie C. Reilly!
lol She sho Nuff took it to em in Harper Valley PTA.
A great song written by Tom T. Hall. My suggestion for another Gentry song would be "Fancy." Reba McIntyre made it famous a 2nd time but Bobbie wrote it.
This song still gets tongues wagging after 40+ years. That's really something!
The crescendo that seems like it's missing (musically), actually occurs when the listener realizes that the author was in love with Billy Joe...regardless of what was thrown off the bridge - it's about a silent grief that nobody else at the dinner table even knew about.
Her rag doll
No baby.he killed himself because of the sexual encounter with the old farmer.
@@gailenefuller8330 Lol! What a crock of total crap!
Literally nothing you wrote is correct. The movie is a false fan fic. It has nothing to do with the song.
It was their baby that they threw off the bridge. Billie Joe committed suicide due to the guilt. It's not a complicated story.
The baby died in one of the following scenarios. Either an improvised abortion (cold blooded murder)! Or neglect/incompetent teenager child delivery knowledge. Or was stillborn (unlikely, due to Billie Joe committing suicide out of guilt).
Mama knew. All the way through the meal, Mama knew.
"That nice young preacher. . .be pleased to have dinner"
I understood that when I was a little girl. I'll paraphrase now. . .
Sit up to the table wit your dad and brother, and there, where your safe, I'll tell you, your worthless boyfriend died.
BUT, that nice brother Taylor is interested. . .
This song charted in Country, Blues and Rock charts when released. An absolute MASTERPIECE! The song goes in and out of being retrospective and first person, in, out, in,out...... hauntingly beautiful! TY for reacting.
Without a doubt.
She paints such a vivid picture of the deep south in the sixties. Even though it's never mentioned, l can see the house with the porch and the wood screen door. The haunting guitar chords and the brilliant strings create the hot and humid mood. I was 14 years old in 1968. This was a summer song and got a lot of airplay during a summer of turmoil. Love your reactions.
Yes
I agree... amazing storytelling
Bobbie Gentry was an amazing woman who was ahead of her time. One of the first to produce her own music. She finally had her fill of the industry and disappeared. She is quite a story. She has lived off the grid so to speak for many years.
And don't forget she was Homecoming Queen ... Joe Diffie said so ...
"She finally had her fill of the industry and disappeared." Nope. she only stayed in the industry a few years and got tired of the travel and logistics of the business and left. She didn't go off the grid. she showed up on shows and events now and then. in a short interview years ago she was asked if it was a true story or not and she still wouldn't say with a grin.
She ain't disappeared,she living here
I heard this song shortly after it came out, as a small child. It's haunting. As I grew up the invisible child, I totally felt the "no one notices or cares" vibe of the story. The brother found out his friend he saw yesterday committed suicide and just asks for more pie. The singer, the daughter, was hiding that she was dating him and feels so sick she can't eat. The mom seems to know but doesn't care. The dad didn't like him and is apathetic to his death. Then the daughter spends the next year on the bridge, and no one notices that she might be thinking of joining Billie Joe. To me, it was so tragic that the boy would die, the girl be in pain, and her family went on as if it was all nothing. I think it got popular due to the mystery. Did they drop a baby in the river? Flowers? But Bobby said years later it was about the unconscious cruelty of people.
The thing they threw of the bridge was the stillborn body of the girls baby, Billy Joe jumped later due to his sadness and despair 😢
@@user-jf1el3ix1o Or not. Gentry said that what was thrown was not important to the story she was telling, it could have been a rock or a brick, because the story was about the family conversation around the table and that they were unintentionally cruel because they were *mostly* unaware of her relationship with Billy Joe. Mom had a clue, I think, and she was kind of needling the daughter with the part about the preacher seeing "a girl that looked a lot like you" to see if she'd react.
"He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Chocktaw Ridge...and she and Billie Joe was throwing something off the Tallehatchie Bridge." I always got the feeling she (the singer/narrator) was Billie Joe's secret girlfriend, since her daddy didn't approve of him, and she's sitting there listening to her family blow off his suicide while she's sitting in shock and grief. IMHO, anyway.
I agree.
God!!! Someone finally gets it! It's why she couldn't eat, why she spends her time there throwing flowers of the bridge. Another song that reactors never grasp is George Jones "He Stopped Loving Her Today" He stopped loving her because he's dead, it's a song about his funeral.
@@ronaldmcrae4896 exactly, I get so frustrated that people that don't get that...it's obvious
I believe you're right!
Yeah I always felt they were throwing a ring off the bridge after breaking up and thats why he killed his self and shes guilt ridden over it
I was 18 when this came out. Notice the “life goes on” attitude as they simply eat as this devastating news comes out. She is emphasizing how their lives go on even though Billie Joe has died. They eat, pass the sides, eat the pie. Life goes on….
"They" all sit and eat, but the narrator is DEVASTATED by this news, and no one knows it.
@@intheparlance
I beg to differ with you.
Mama knows dang well what she's doing, AND what her daughter's been doing / is feeling.
She dropped the info bomb at the table, and watched Everybody's reaction. She knows full well why her girl can't eat.
I think many people miss the point of, "that nice young preacher. . . Dinner on sunday"
Mama knows. She knows.
I have no idea what other people call her style, but I think of it as a fusion of country and blues.
I've been trying to figure out the story for over half a century. And I still have a crush on Bobbie Gentry.
Another one of her hits was 'Fancy'.
takes me back to my high school years in Louisiana - the manners, the sights, the dismissive way they talk about another person death as of no importance while it breaks the heart of the singer!!! This is an "old time ballad" it tells a story while it draws you in to the story - not the music!!!
Bobbie (not Bobby) Gentry did a USO tour for the GIs in Vietnam a year earlier that my stepfather was at. When he came home, he could not get enough of her and her music. I heard her music almost every night.
BOBBIE not Bobby damn
Also; Bobbi Gentry's "Son Of A Preacher Man" is another great song.
Thats dusty Springfield song!?
@@penderyn8794 They both recorded it in1968 but Dusty put it on the charts ... Bobbie retired when she married the Harrah's Casino magnate ..... Their voices sound a lot alike but Bobbie's has a lot more instrumentation ...
I’m gonna have to hear that. Thanks for posting.
Didn't Dusty Springfield sing that song too?
That's Dusty Springfield ijs 💯😁
Bobbie Gentry was a stunningly beautiful woman with a unique singing voice!
This song is haunting!
It's completely unique. She is singing a movie. It all plays out in your head. She sings just slow enough you can vision it in your mind.
People have speculated ever since this song came out about what they threw off the bridge and why Billie Joe committed suicide. Bobbie Gentry herself said the song wasn't about that, but was really "a study in unconscious cruelty." The family sat around the dinner table and talked about what happened as if it were just some little thing, while missing the fact that the daughter was so upset that she couldn't even eat. Everyone else had a hearty appetite.
There was a movie based on the song that explained what they threw off the bridge and why Billie Joe killed himself. It didn't make much money, and it's best forgotten, in my opinion. The song is better for being a mystery.
yeah the movie was kinda awful and didn't represent the song well at all. it's like the movie is fan fic not canon.
@@watcherwlc53 You are precisely correct. The movie had nothing to do with the song. It was a travesty.
It was their baby that they threw off the bridge. Billie Joe committed suicide due to the guilt. It's not a complicated story.
The baby died in one of the following scenarios. Either an improvised abortion (cold blooded murder)! Or neglect/incompetent teenager child delivery knowledge. Or was stillborn (unlikely, due to Billie Joe committing suicide out of guilt).
@@duckduckgoismuchbetter The song doesn't outright say so, but your interpretation is a common one. Bobby Gentry has never outright said what it was either, but has noted it was supposed to be something specific.
@@watcherwlc53 Yes. She sold out the plain meaning of her own song for thirty pieces of silver.
The movie made her a lot of money, and she would have had to know that a sequel, and additional movies about her other songs, were a distinct possibility. So she sold out the plain meaning of the song in order to not conflict with the travesty that Director Jethro Bodine (gay director Max Baer, Jr) rewrote it into.
People in the music industry sell out their own creative products all the time. It's not unusual.
I don't dislike Gentry, but she did her own song a disservice in exchange for a potential for making more money by avoiding controversy, and acquiring a reputation for "being difficult" by contradicting the movie people.
This one's a great "southern gothic" mystery - somewhat in feel to Vicki Lawrence's - The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia (covered by Reba McEntire).
ooh yeah they should do that one too!
I find Led Zeppelin’s “Friends” , “Black Country Woman”, and “Gallows Pole” give similar vibes while using folk inflections rather than country
Yes, but do Vicky Lawrence's original version, not the Reba video.
@@lindanicholson950 Personally I don't like hardly anything about the original 😬
@@jimthecactus7425 it's the one I heard first. I love Reba, but I like the original of this song better.
I always took it as she and Billy had a child together but due to fear they threw the baby off of the bridge and then Billy could not live with himself and at the ens she was thinking about joining him and their child. The song is haunting and beautiful.
That's it!
Not even close much more twisted than that, I highly recommend the movie starring Robbie Benson
Is that why she hasn’t been seen?
It's not a baby. Watch the movie "Ode to Billy Joe" . It'll make sense.
@@jeffreyharper2731 it’s a rag doll ain’t it? I hadn’t watched it
It’s folk, and she wrote it, but what she does is tell two stories at once. She paints a southern dinner that I might have been at and tells the story of death at the same time, supercraft! She wrote it, she sang it, and she played the guitar in it, and she was gorgeous.
I was a 12 year old kid back when this came out. It seemed like no matter what radio station you tuned into, Rock, Country western, there was a good chance they were playing this song. It was Haunting, and even a little bit scary as a kid to listen to this story. Especially with Bobbie Gentry's fantastic narration. Was it murder? and who was involved. Suicide" what really happened?
For me, it's all about how they are casually having dinner conversation about Billy Joe. The song was written in definite conversational style.
Big hats off to the production team on the BBC for this, they captured it beautifully.
It's a video in your mind, singing a story, and singing the video. She definitely gives you the whole experience. Masterpiece ❤
I've fished that river many times. I believe with all my heart that it holds more secrets than will ever be told. The original Tallahatchie River Bridge is no longer in use. My late father in law had one of the cast iron spheres from the top of it. This song is really entwined in my memory and my life. 💜💚💛✌️
I was 5 years old when this cam out, but my mother listened to nothing but country music and I rmemeber all through the early 70's hearing this song. I can honestly say this is the first time I actually listened to all the words, and her conversational lyrics put to the guitar, combined with the emotion and everything, was absolute genius.I honestly felt like I was sitting at the dinner table with her.
Great performance by Bobbie of her amazing number-one hit mystery song. Cool reaction.
♥️Bobby was of my generation and the song played on the radio remains a mystery which we never solved. She was a genius lyricist and had genius interpreting style.
A lot of great comments below, and yes the song is about how casual everyone was at the dinner table even though this tradgic event happened. But another thing was, the family didn't even realize that Bobby was Billy Joe's girl, there fore she lost her appetite. 🤔🤔😎
It's called Southern gothic. A dark subject maybe a mystery
This song knocked The Beatles off of the #1 spot on the charts and held it for four weeks.
You are noticing her use of dynamics, very unique. When she sings something about him, it's like her voice catches in her throat.
Everyone has wanted to know about Billy Joe for over 50 years.
They made a whole movie out of this song - and some mysteries are all the better for not being solved!
Robby Benson!!! Yum!!!
Oh yes. You can still find the movie online. I think I'll make the popcorn right now. 😎👍🍿
The movie sucked
@@lornemarmet5898 In your opinion. Some of us like it.
@@lornemarmet5898 In absolute terms it was perhaps a bit weak - but framed against all other movies completely made by a country song - it is Citizen Kane - recall the competition includes the Gambler and the like
It amazes me that the entire family can sit around a table eating and talking about Billy Joe not even realizing the woman who knows him (maybe even loves him) best is sitting at the table with them.
I've always interpreted this song as she and Billy Joe were lovers, she got pregnant and either had an abortion or miscarried. They tossed the fetus off the bridge, Billy couldn't handle it emotionally and committed suicide later. Grim, but that's the story I got out of the lyrics of this song.
I’ve heard this song since I was a teenager and that is exactly what I think happened.
Same here.
That was my thoughts too. Death of the fetus, then the death of Billy, then the death of her father.
It's such a lonely song. She goes through all of this grief and everyone is oblivious.
That's the story a lot of people got from this song. Including me.
This is story telling at its finest.
One of the greatest storytelling songs ever. The lyrics stir your imagination. 🌞
Music was getting very diverse in the 1960s. Talented very young song writers like Carole King and Bob Dylan and the very young rock groups who crowded the radio waves with astonishing sounds. Elvis maybe led the way as many older listeners rejected his exciting sound. Bobby Gentry's song was a hung hit and we absolutely loved it. There was enough unanswered to make us listen over and over. What an era.
More than 50 years later people are STILL trying to figure out why he jumped and what they threw off.
You might have missed the central emotion of the song. She was in love with Billy Joe and her family didn't know; m they talked about his death so casually at the dinner table when her heart was breaking.
The popular speculation story I remember from the time is that she and Billy Joe had a secret baby that was born too soon/stillborn so they threw the baby into the river, and Billy Joe was so heartbroken that he killed himself too.
THAT is great songwriting.
It represents the indifference of people around the singer who don't recognize her pain and to the death of Billie Joe.
I can visualize everything in this song,, she does an amazing job of making you feel like you are there
Her delivery is what made her such a great artist! She puts you right in the middle of this story but leaves you wondering.
Did I tell you I do not like country? But I love this one. The way she wrote and sang it makes me cry almost every time. So earthy, so home sounding.
If you like Bobbie Gentry and her storytelling check out "Fancy" another song she wrote and sings
Yes. She sung fancy so much better than Reba McEntire.
@@willowb1527 Yep.....not knocking Reba.....in her wheelhouse she can knock it out of the park.....but like Ode to Billy Joe its Bobbie Gentry territory
Beautiful woman with a fantastic voice, she wrote some great songs
She's playing her song, she's telling a story,while mesmerizing us with her image . She's portrayed in black and white.A goddess,with an instrument,oh,and a guitar lol.This is mindplay of a siren
Bobbie Gentry was brilliant. She retired and became a recluse. It has been a mystery all these many years what they threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge and why Billy Joe jumped. June 3rd is Ode to Billy Joe Day.
I think what you may be picking up on and trying to attribute a style to, is the conversational nature of the singing. She's playing the parts of each member of a family sitting around the table, having a meal, and each expressing their thought on the gossip/event of the day. One is sayin' "Pity, pity, nothin' good...." and then one of the boys says, " remember that time with the frog at the picture show?". That feeling that she's going into and then out of the song, might be imagined as the next person having their say or maybe even pausing for a few seconds in the middle of a comment to finish chewing then swallowing a bite then finishing the thought, just like would happen at an actual kitchen table conversation, among family. She's just leavin' out the " What I tell you about talkin' with your mouth full?" part. LOL
The best way I know how to describe this song (because I grew up listening to this with my mom) is 100% original. The way the violins go up and down in a sort of haunting way, there's nothing else like it. It's put in the same genre as country, but this song is just so beautiful in a haunting way and I've never heard anything even CLOSE to this ever. I highly recommend you watch the movie. People were so captivated by the song that they made a movie about it. It answers questions about what was thrown in the water and it answers why he killed himself and the movie is called "ode to Billy Joe" just like the song. Give it a watch. It's just as amazing as the song!!!
As Gentry told Fred Bronson, “The song is sort of a study in unconscious cruelty. But everybody seems more concerned with what was thrown off the bridge than they are with the thoughtlessness of the people expressed in the song. What was thrown off the bridge really isn’t that important.
“Everybody has a different guess about what was thrown off the bridge-flowers, a ring, even a baby. Anyone who hears the song can think what they want, but the real message of the song, if there must be a message, revolves around the nonchalant way the family talks about the suicide. They sit there eating their peas and apple pie and talking, without even realizing that Billie Joe’s girlfriend is sitting at the table, a member of the family.”
I'm a baby boomer and I was 13 when this song came out it was one of my favorite songs all through my teenage years and I still love listening to it thanks for reacting to it😊
I have always said that I think the baby boomers had some of the best storytelling songs of all eras....❤
This is a folk - country ballad
I always loved this song. Lady has a killer voice very rich tone 🧡🧡
Bobbie Gentry wrote this and a lot of other songs. She insisted on owning the rights to her music and broke new ground for female artists. I believe she retreated from the spotlight early on. This song was a huge crossover hit in the country and pop charts. Great storytelling. Great choice 🌺✌️
The jucstposition of the everyday conversation as the darkest secret she's carriying is so powerful an image, but its really clear At the end when u see the flowers floating in the water, there's two pure white flowers.. its symbolic of two lost souls... I felt every single word of this!
the point of the songs is that fact of how cruel people are just discussing the death of someone without really understanding the young woman sat at the dinner table was involved with billie joe and was sad that he had jumped which is why she was not eating.
Love the strings in this song
When they made the movie; the girl leaves town, pretending to be pregnant, to protect the boy;s reputation because he was gay and had a relationship with an older man. Bobbie Gentry got fed up with the changes the record companies wanted her to make and ended up quitting the business. You should check out songs like Refractions; Courtyard & Parchman Farm. She was a story telling genius and they wanted to do the same old stuff that everyone was else was doing; they did not understand what she was about and we lost decades of wonderful music, kerk
YES, YES, YES, oh my gosh, what a classic man. Remember this song so well. They don't play music with such heartfelt emotion and feeling today. Love this, thank you for playing this iconic classic song again. Brings back great memories. Gives me chills.
There’s a haunting feeling to the song . I always wondered if this was a story about her or someone very close to her .
I remember when it came out (yeah, I'm as old as dirt). Sounds like she's putting a story to music. I also think that she had a fight with her boyfriend Billy Joe, threw the ring into the river, and it hurt him so much that he jumped off the bridge. Well, that's my story anyway.
not quite, not a ring. for the song says they "both where throwing something off the bridge. that means something heavy, or a baby.
@@dawg897 one might think mamma, and daddy might notice the development of an approaching grandchild.....
@@crankyyankee7290 Not necessarily. Pregnancies do not always show. Literally nothing else fits the facts of the song except for a deceased baby. Nothing.
@Aaron D. Digby, Sr. There's nothing particularly mysterious about the essence of what happened in this song.
It's a well written, and straightforward song about a secret romance, a hidden pregnancy and a tragic outcome to the pregnancy. And the aftermath thereof.
At the time it was released, everyone understood that was what the song was about.
@@duckduckgoismuchbetter That is true. I knew a woman once that was pregnant but did not show at all. She lived with her boyfriend. She had the baby at home and the boyfriend came home and was a father. He left the house a single man in the morning and returned home as a father. The ambulance that was called to the house for the woman turned out to be for the boyfriend: they had to take him to the emergency room and give him tranquilizers.
What makes the song great isn’t the answers, but the questions left unanswered.
OH, FOR CHRISSAKES!!!! ARE YOU TRULY THAT BLIND??!!!
This is, without doubt, the MOST SUBVERSIVE song ever written!!!!
The song is about a PREGNANCY by the singer. The father is Billie Joe McAllister.
Everyone in the narrator's family is so detached, and in their own worlds, that NOBODY notices her ever swelling belly.
She gives birth on Choctaw Ridge (nothing good ever comes from Choctaw Ridge)......with Billy Joe McAllister in attendance.
It's a live birth, but each knows, this newborn will be the ruin of both of them in that small Southern town.
So.........they kill it, wrap it up, and dump it into to the swift flowing waters beneath the Tallahatchie Bridge. THAT'S what they were seen throwing "something" off the bridge.
Billie Joe's guilt finally overwhelms him and he commits suicide by jumping off the bridge.
The narrator of the song is WAAAY stronger mentally, and endures not only those two tragedies, but also, the additional ones of her father's death from a "fever" and the subsequent clinical catatonic depression her mother lapses into.
Beautiful and haunting, truly a masterpiece
Nice take, I enjoy your reactions. I always thought, like from the second to last verse, “Said he saw a girl looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge, and she and Billy Joe was throwing something off the Tallahatchee Bridge.” I always thought… baby?? Then she goes up there a lot and throws flowers. Idk. This is a masterpiece of singing/songwriting, it makes one think. Now check out Violent Femmes “Country Death Song.”
I always thought it was a baby too!
Yup you got the story line RIGHT 👍🏼
@@nealfriend6797 Really? I’ve always thought that was it, but I’ve never heard any confirmation. Do you know that for sure that that was the story line?
@@sfbayareagirl no one knows for sure and that's the point.
It's like Carly Simon never telling who she wrote "You're So Vain" about.
I recall listening to this back when I was in high school. This was a huge hit and really served to establish her reputation as an amazing singer and story teller. Great review.
When this song came up I was four years old. They played it on the radio all the time and that used to haunt me. I miss the days when the radio used to play real music.
To fully appreciate this song it has to be listened to in stereo. This mono cut leaves out a lot of effects that add to the song. Maximilian Adalbert Baer Jr. AKA Jethro Bodine from The Beverly Hillbillies produced a movie based on this song with the same name starring Robby Benson and Glynnis O'Connor in 1976. Check it out. Think you may like it. Both the song and the movie are purely fictional. But the locations are from her childhood.
Thank you for reacting to this. The great mystery . What did "they" throw off the bridge?
This song has been a mystery since the 60s. And it's still working.
The girl in the song was in love with Billy Joe. Such a sad song of loss.
She was beautifully talented. This isn't some derivative that you see so often today. This is the real thing.
The girl in the song was pregnant. She had a miscarriage. She and Billy Joe tossed the remains off the bridge. Billy Joe's conscience got the best of him. He could not live with what they had done, as she was such a young girl. So he ended it.
Ok I’m 74 and I know what is was it was a baby. She was underage and they were scared to death. So she hid this until the baby was born or miscarriage ( ?) but that’s what they threw off the bridge! I do love you both and these songs were all what I was listening too rock n roll in the 60s and 70s and little from the 80s metal bands. So there it is! I hope I can answer any other questions too! I sang in my brothers rock in roll band in the 60s sang Beatles Rolling Stones and music is in my families blood .
The general conception in terms of what the female narrator on the song and Billie Joe threw of the bridge was the dead body of their baby child.
The fact she left the song open to interpretation was genius songwriting. I live about 30 miles upstream of the bridge in the video, which is no longer there. ;-)
This song has driven me nuts for 50 years !!!! I love it so much but for the love of Pete I sure would like to know why he jumped, what they threw in the water and why was the preacher spying on them
One of the simplest songs to play on geetar,but one of the most haunting. Roberta Gentry could've been one of the biggest female vocalists of all time had she chose to stay in the business. She was one beautiful,talented songstress,a tremendous songwriter,and storyteller,and this is one of those haunting stories she was able to convey,her deadpan delivery just nailed this performance. It was eventually made into a movie several decades back.
Honestly when you learn the story of her life! And how life was in 1968 This has to be one of the most heartfelt performances ever captured on film next to the Nicholas Brothers
Her and Billy Joe threw something off the bridge. What it was is still a mystery. Whatever it was caused Billy to take his life.....There is a movie called Ode to Billy Joe. Might want to check it out.
Many believe it was a baby that she hide her pregnancy from everyone and they decided to toss it and Billy could not live with it, but it's just a theory...
I always guessed that it was a baby that was stillborn.
Robby Benson!
its a very haunting song, and a masterpiece. first time I heard it on the radio I was stoned to bone and so captured by the story I pulled over on the side of the road and just sat and listened. yaw outta listen to her song "fancy" it is about as real of a song as you will find. Bobbi was a total babe and an amazing talent. she was married to one of the most underrated guitarist of all time, glen campbell, too
She was married briefly to Jim Stafford , not Glen Campbell .
@@714cjp This is heartbreaking.. I have believed since childhood they were married. I appreciate the truth, but because of my love for their music, that was a gut shot.
You can still love their music . 😉
@@714cjp lol thank you, and I shall
I don't think this song is so country as it is blues and soul with a country accent. Her descriptions of place, actions and dialect are all country, but the cadence and rhythm of the guitar are blues. The more I listen to the song, the more I am in awe of Bobby Gentry's masterful story telling. The song appears simple but she uses tone, pitch and cadence in her voice to switch back and forth between perspectives. The orchestration also is used to help her switch the narration. She plays around with phrasing too so that in one measure she can be talking about Billy Joe jumping off the bridge and then a beat later "Pass the biscuit please." It's genius. There is a steady rhythmic pattern to the guitar chords that doesn't change. Her story telling follows the same pattern. For people who have roots in the South it must be wonderful to hear these tiny reminders of life in the South from the food, to the conversation. Again, this is masterful storytelling and reflection.
MOST singer/songwriter's write about their personal experiences or, other folks personal life experiences. I "DEFINITELY" believe, feel, think, that, BG was writing from an experience in her life, when she was younger. OR, telling someone elses story that she was Very, VERY close to. And she put it to pen and paper.
Question: Curious. Was there and has ANYONE EVER tried to look up county birth records FOR a Billie Joe McAllister, IN THAT particular state/county/town/city?
I’m from the 60s (60s hippie musician). Back then, the word was she got pregnant from her boyfriend Billie Joe. And abortions were illegal back then. And they weren’t married. So she had a secret abortion and that’s what they were throwing off the bridge, together. And he couldn’t take it and committed suicide. And that’s why she’s always picking flowers and throwing them in the river, in remembrance of her aborted baby, and Billie Joe. But back in the 60s, she couldn’t come right out and say it, she had an abortion. So it was disguised in the song. At least that’s what I recall the backstory was and rumored to have been told by Bobby Gentry.
I said the same thing, incl back then things were more censored. That’s why many today they can’t figure it out bc today it’s so straight forward. I also was around when this song came out.
I've always thought this song has a lot of blues in it.
her music style is called Delta Blues. Mississippi Delta Blues
The way she sang it is much like southerners speak. In a questioning manner at times. Throughout the song it seems like she is having a conversation in her own mind with a questioning manner.
Billy Joe was just a local guy, nobody special. The thing that makes this song unique is the subtlety and restraint she used when telling the story, and how the family sort of casually discussed Billy Joe's death without realizing that Billy Joe had been very significant to the daughter. After hearing the news, she sat there in shock while Papa talked about his plowing and brother asked for another piece of apple pie. You don't find out til near the end about the relationship between the girl and Billy Joe (references to her not touching her food, and spending her time dropping flowers into the Tallahatchie river).
always loved this tune and yes she was a fine looking woman!
some think it was her infant born out of wedlock that they threw off the bridge.
This is one of the greats, ode to billy joe great musical story telling
The great strength of this song is that she doesn't TELL. She shows, not tells, which makes the listener an active participant.
Wow..this was great
I think most people have already said what was on everybody's mind. Just what did she and billy joe throw off the bridge. Bobbie Gentry has refused to say to this day.
She did say it was a case of "Unconscious Cruelty" in so much as nobody treats Billy Joe's death with any respect as in Papa's "pass the biscuits please" etc
But another great reaction well done. Always look forward to them
I know its asking too much but could you try and react to "Down From Dover" by Dolly Parton
There is actually a movie titled “Ode to Billy Joe.” Came out in the 70s….don’t watch unless you want to be depressed. They didn’t throw a baby off the bridge.
Thanks again to you both from Canada. When I was 13 in 67 this was a big hit, and I still enjoy listening to it. Cheers.