Every year on this date, I almost always remember Ode to Billie Joe by Bobbie Gentry, which came out 40 years ago this fall. I even own the LP named after the song, which I believe I got from the Capitol Records Club via the "negative option"; i.e., I failed to mail in the refusal card in time. The meaning of the song has been long dissected. I think as one person wrote, it was ancient the day it came out. It said a lot by saying so little. What WAS thrown off the bridge? I remember the local radio station near Binghamton, WENE, running a contest about that, in the day. The winning entry was a diamond ring. Most theorists, though, had more sinister theories.
There was a 1976 movie, directed by Max Baer, Jr., Jethro Bodine from The Beverly Hillbillies, which as I recall, was awful AND offensive, and came up with a theory for Billy Joe's death that was a preposterous leap from the evidence given in the song. BTW, the name was spelled Billie Joe on the album, but most lyrics cite it as Billy Joe.
The tune, which rivaled only American Pie five years later in that era for discussions of the true meaning of the song, was never really clarified by songwriter Gentry. The song was parodied by Dylan in Clothesline Saga. But my favorite piece of trivia about the song is that it can be sung to the tune of Prince's 1999. It's not a perfect fit, but pretty close!
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 we walked back to the house to eat.
And mama hollered at the back door "y'all remember to wipe your feet."
And then she said she got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge
Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
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."
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 Billy 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 Billy Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge."
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.
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.
6 comments:
What? Billie Joe tossing himself off the bridge because we was gay is offensive? Get out!
Offensive, maybe. But very plausible given both the era and the region.
First time I saw Lucinda Williams she did this as the encore--solo acoustic yet. She talked about how Bobbie Gentry had been a big influence on her. I was surprised that I had never noticed it before, but it's all over her stuff.
I don't know if I've ever heard the Bobbie Gentry classic, but I always liked Bob Dylan's "Clothesline Saga". I thought it was pretty funny without knowing that it was a parody. (Kind of like a New Yorker cartoon - eg, by George Booth) So who was Vice President when the Basement Tapes were recorded anyway?....
Looks like Hubert Humphreys... As far as I can make out on Wikipedia (Q: Do I trust Wikipedia TOO MUCH?)
Another thought was, I don't think you can assume that Dylan didn't like Bobbie Gentry's song just because his song seems to parody it. Like I said, I thought it was funny without even knowing the Gentry song at all...
Edwin- Yes, HHH was VP in '67, when the Basement Tapes were made, but do you know who was VP whern they were released in '75? Nelson Rockefeller.
Eddie-But what were the narrator and BJ throwing off the bridge, and how does that relate to his "confused sexxuality"? I just don't think it follows.
BTW, some possibilities I've read, such as Billie Joe was black, I dismissed because I doubt the black kid was hanging out with the white kids in those days. I also read that the bridge in a photo was about a mile from where the very real Emmitt Till'ws body was found in 1955. Now THAT was spooky.
In the Wall Street Journal issue of June 2 and 3, Lucinda Williams lists albums by her favorite songwriters. Highway 61-B. Dylan; Wildflowers-J. Collins; Five Leaves Left-N. Drake; Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere- N. Young; and Ode to Billie Joe by Bobbie Gentry, which is listed as out of print. "Her stuff is kind of country soul. Like I got caught between the proverbial crack between countrey and rock when I was trying to get a record, she kind of got caught in the cracks."
Note the article date, the 3rd of June!
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