AUGUST 5, 1967 – Bobbie Gentry released her #1 smash hit “Ode to Billie Joe.” She rose to international fame with the intriguing Southern Gothic narrative, and the track spent four weeks as the #1 pop song on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and was fourth overall in the Billboard year-end chart of 1967. The single, a startling and cryptic story song released in late July, also became a big international seller and generated eight 1968 Grammy nominations, resulting in three wins for Best Female Vocal Performance, Best Contemporary Female Pop Solo Vocal Performance, and Best New Artist, as well as one win for arranger Jimmie Haskell.
Gentry’s 1969 album “Fancy” brought her another Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The title track was covered by Reba McEntire in 1991 and reached #8 on the US Hot Country Songs Chart.In total, Gentry charted eleven singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and four singles on the UK Top 40 during the course of her career. After her first albums, she had a successful run of variety shows on the Las Vegas Strip, but lost interest in performing in the late 1970s, and since has lived privately in Los Angeles. On June 20, 1972, the Tallahatchie Bridge in Money, Mississippi collapsed, but was later rebuilt.
LYRICS:
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, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And 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
And 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 Billie 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-a apple pie; you know, it don’t seem right
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge
And now ya tell me Billie Joe’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And 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 and gone since we heard the news ’bout Billy Joe
And 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 want to 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
