Ode to Billie Joe
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“Ode to Billie Joe”
album cover
Single by Bobbie Gentry from the album Ode to Billie Joe
B-side	"Mississippi Delta"
Released	July 1967
Format	7", 45rpm
Genre	Country music, Blues
Length	4:15
Label	Capitol 5950
Writer(s)	Bobbie Gentry
Producer	Kelly Gordon
Bobbie Gentry singles chronology
"Requiem for Love" (with Jody Reynolds, 1963) "Ode to Billie Joe" (1967) "I Saw an Angel Die" (1967)
Audio sample
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Ode to Billie Joe is a 1967 song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a singer-songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. The single, released in late July, was a massive number-one hit in the USA, and became a big international seller. The title song is ranked #412 on the Rolling Stone magazine's list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The recording of "Ode to Billie Joe" generated eight Grammy nominations, including three wins for Gentry and one win for arranger Jimmie Haskell.¹

The story

This song is a first person narrative that reveals a quasi-Southern Gothic tale in its verses by including the dialog of the narrator's immediate family at lunchtime on the day that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge."

The song begins with the narrator and her brother returning, after morning chores, to the family house for dinner. After cautioning them about tracking in dirt, "Mama" says that she "got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge" that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge," apparently to his death.

At the dinner table, the narrator's father is unsurprised at the news and says, "Well, Billie Joe never had a lick o' sense," and mentions that there are "five more acres in the lower forty I got to plow." Although her brother seems to be taken aback ("I saw him at the sawmill yesterday.... And now you tell me Billie Joe has jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"), he's not shocked enough to keep him from having a second piece of pie. Late in the song, Mama questions the narrator's complete loss of appetite ("Child, what's happened to your appetite? I been cookin' all mornin' and you haven't touched a single bite,") yet earlier in the song recalled a visit earlier that morning by Brother Taylor who is, apparently, the local preacher. He mentioned that he had seen Billie Joe and a girl who looked (to him) very much like the narrator herself and they were "throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge."

In the song's final verse, a year has passed, during which the narrator's brother has married and moved away. Also, her father died from a viral infection, which has left her mother despondent. The narrator herself now visits Choctaw Ridge often, picking flowers there to drop from the Tallahatchie Bridge onto the murky waters flowing beneath it.

Mystery craze

The mysteries surrounding the characters in the song created something of a cultural sensation. In 1975, Gentry told author Herman Raucher that she hadn't come up with a reason for Billie Joe's suicide when she wrote the song. She has stated in numerous interviews over the years that the focus of the song was not the suicide itself, but the rather matter-of-fact way that the narrator's family was discussing the tragedy over dinner, unaware that Billie Joe might well have been her boyfriend.

A popular speculation at the release of the song in 1967 (unsupported by either the song's lyrics or the culture of that area and time period) was that the narrator and Billie Joe threw their baby (either stillborn or aborted) off the bridge, and Billie Joe then killed himself out of grief and guilt. This version of events is accentuated in the Sinead O'Connor version, where a baby is heard to cry at the moment the mystery item is thrown off the bridge. There was also speculation that Billie Joe was a black man, having a forbidden affair with the white narrator, although the culture of that area, in that time period, made it extremely unlikely that a black male would have had any part in the events described in the song's lyrics (a frog down the narrator's back at a public movie theater, socializing with the narrator's family after church, or being seen together throwing "something" off of a bridge in public).

Novel and screenplay adaptations

The song's popularity proved so enduring that in 1976, nine years after its release, Warner Bros. commissioned author Herman Raucher to adapt it into a novel and screenplay, Ode to Billy Joe (note different spelling). The poster's tagline, which treats the film as being based on actual events and even gives a date of death for Billy (June 3, 1953), led many to believe that the song was based on actual events. In fact, when Raucher met Bobbie Gentry in preparation for writing the novel and screenplay, she confessed that she herself had no idea why Billie killed himself. In Raucher's novel and screenplay, Billy Joe kills himself after a drunken homosexual experience, and the object thrown from the bridge is the narrator's ragdoll.

Billy Joe's story is analyzed in Professor John Howard's history of gay Mississippi entitled Men Like That: A Queer Southern History as an archetype of what Howard calls the gay suicide myth.

Cover versions

"Ode" was so popular in 1967 that Frank Sinatra, who loved it, asked jazz great Ella Fitzgerald to sing a few verses for his TV special. Dozens of other musicians subsequently recorded cover versions of the song.

1960s

• Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald did a cover of the song on Sinatra's TV special A Man And His Music-And Ella in 1967.
• Joe Dassin, American-French singer, recorded a French version in October 1967, translated by Jean-Michel Rivat and Frank Thomas. In the French version the central character is Marie-Jeanne Guillaume, who jumps into the Garonne.
• The Ventures, released another electric guitar instrumental version of the song on their $1,000,000 Weekend album in December 1967.
• Nancy Wilson (singer) featured a cover of the song on her 1968 album Welcome to My Love. The track is notable for a funky, driving arrangement by Oliver Nelson. It was used by David Holmes in an Essential Mix he produced for BBC Radio 1 in 1997.
• Margie Singleton, country music singer, recorded a version of the song in the late 1960s, and made it a Top 40 Country hit.
• Vibraphonist Cal Tjader kicked off side one of his 1968 Solar Heat album with a Latin jazz instrumental version of the song.
• Buddy Rich and his orchestra recorded a rousing uptempo 3/4-time version to close 1968's "Mercy Mercy"

1970s

• Karin Krog recorded a version with Dexter Gordon on the album Some Other Spring in 1970.
• Bluegrass and rock guitarist Clarence White, a latter-day member of The Byrds, performed an electric guitar instrumental version of "Ode to Billie Joe" with the band Nashville West on the mid-1970s album of the same name, released on the Sierra Briar label and actually made up of previously unreleased 1967 live recordings. White died in 1973 in California after being hit by a drunk driver, as he and his band were loading up equipment after a gig.
• The late guitar great Danny Gatton and pedal steel legend Buddy Emmons traded licks on a funkified version of "Ode to Billie Joe" on live recording titled Redneck Jazz (NRG Records, 1978).
• The Fifth Dimension recorded a version before a live audience, with the five group members individually performing the Narrator, Mama, Daddy, Brother, and the Preacher. This version was released on the group's Live! album.

1980s

• The British band Torch Song covered the tune for their 1984 album Wish Thing. They released it as a single in 1985.
• Danish post-punk band Sort Sol covered the song on their 1986 album Everything That Rises Must Converge.
• Bonnie Hayes covered it on her 1987 album Empty Sky (Beacon Records BEA-51562).
• Henry Kaiser, avant-garde guitarist and marine biologist, recorded a sprawling 9:35 version for his album of eclectic pop-rock covers, Those Who Know History Are Doomed to Repeat It (SST Records, 1989). Cary Sheldon's warm and expressive voice provides sweetness to combine with Kaiser's gently dissonant, psychedelic guitar work for exactly the right spooky effect.

1990s

• Patricia Barber, jazz singer and pianist covered the song on her 1994 album Cafe Blue.
• Sinéad O'Connor covered the song for the War Child charity benefit album The Help Album (1995).
• Phranc, folk singer-songwriter, covered the song as "Ode to Billy Joe" on her 1995 EP Goofyfoot.
• Farmer's Daughter recorded a version on the album Makin' Hay in 1996.
• Satan and Adam, a blues duo, recorded their version on their 1996 album Living on the River.
• John Butler recorded a version on the EMI records 2-disc release entitled Come Again in 1997.
• Sheryl Crow recorded the song during her VH1 Storytellers session in 1998. Introducing the song, Sheryl Crow cited it as one of her major influences, stating that she was fascinated with the string arrangement and that she'd tried to carry that through on her own records.
• Tom Scott, jazz saxophonist, covered the song on his 1999 album Smokin' Section. The lead vocals were performed by Patty Smyth, former lead singer of Scandal.

2000s

• Blues musicians Paul Oscher and Steve Guyger recorded an instrumental version, which features the melody on harmonica, and was released on their Album Living Legends: Deep in the Blues in June, 2000.
• Country artist Leslie Satcher covered the song on her 2002 album Love Letters.
• Megan Mullally and Supreme Music Program covered the song on their 2002 album, Big As A Berry.
• Country Singer Ashley Gearing covered Ode to Billie Joe on her 2006 album Maybe It's Time.
• Roch Voisine covers this song on his 2008 album, Americana.

Parody

Bob Dylan's 1967 "Clothesline Saga," sometimes referred to as "Clothes Line" (on The Basement Tapes), is a parody of the song. It mimics the conversational style of "Ode to Billie Joe" with lyrics concentrating on routine household chores. The shocking event buried in all the mundane details is the revelation that "The Vice-President's gone mad!"²

The Austin Lounge Lizards' "Shallow End of the Gene Pool", from their 1995 album Small Minds, is melodically similar to "Ode to Billie Joe", and in fact ends with the line "and that's why Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge".

Chart positions

USA

Billboard Singles

Billboard albums

References

1. ^ "Grammy.com winners search". Retrieved on 2008-11-05.
2. ^ Dylan, Bob (1975). "Bob Dylan: "Clothesline"". The Basement Tapes. Retrieved on 2007-12-27.

External links

• The Mystery of Billy Joe
• Discussion about the song