Bobbie Gentry - Ode To Billie Joe

[pinto]

In its time, this song made a lot of people stop and think twice. ~ pinto

[Faygo Kid]

1. Love it, but the mods may delete this one

Hope they let it stand.

[ladjf]

15. Why would the mods delete this post? nt

[Autumn]

2. Lot of whispers as to what that was about.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Edited to add did a google on it

http://performingsongwriter.com/bobbie-gentry-ode-billie-joe/

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.”

[PolitFreak]

3. Did you see the movie?

It makes a clear statement as to the meaning, though I've no idea if such is what Gentry meant.

[Autumn]

4. No I never saw the movie, what was

the meaning in the movie?

[PolitFreak]

6. Billie Joe had sex with a man

That was given as the reason for his suicide.

[Autumn]

7. Glad I never bothered with watching the movie.

Sounds like they took a good song and made a crappy movie out of it.

[johnnypneumatic]

10. Really? why does that necessarily make it "crappy"?

actually it was a very effective movie concerning the tragedy of a teen boy growing up in the '50s in the south trying to deal with being gay in a homophobic culture that that did not even give him a context in which to understand it or a language to speak of it. He desperately wanted to love the girl and be normal, but could not escape his true self. It is still relevant, gay kids still commit suicide, and a lot of the country is still homophobic and gives them no alternative they can see...

[Autumn]

13. All the talk of the song at the time

I had never heard that scenario come up. I thought it was something to with both of them, since they were seen together, throwing flowers off the bridge.

[johnnypneumatic]

16. i can understand that

Bobby Gentry said herself that she didn't know why he jumped, and "what if it was a wedding ring?", in other words there was no right answer.
I think a lot of people were surprised at the interpretation taken by the movie, I certainly was. But being a gay teen at the time, 1976, the movie was a shock to me, I thought I was going to see a movie about something else, only to have it cut too close to home.
The thing about the song, the narrator knows what really happened, but can't or doesn't talk about it. She suffers in silence. He is just dead and no one cares or knows why. Gay kids have been killing themselves all throughout history and no one cared, and those who did know wouldn't talk about it because it was so "shameful" to even hint about it. Better to let their deaths be a mystery, let them be presumed to be heterosexuals, not "one of those".

[Autumn]

17. I understand that.

Good people do care and that attitude will be in the past for everyone. It's coming.

[Skittles]

20. ?

it was a good movie; very poignant

[Autumn]

25. That scenario never came up in my girlish fantasies

but now I'm thinking I may have to look for the movie.

[pinto]

9. Whaa?

[tclambert]

18. The song is a horror story told in a dead-pan style.

The girl narrating the song actually was the girl seen with Billy Joe throwing something off the bridge. Maybe they were lovers. Maybe what they threw off the bridge was nothing important. Or maybe they had a fight, and she threw his ring off the bridge. Maybe it was the doctor's report saying she was pregnant. Maybe it was their secret baby.

Next day, he jumped after the whatever it was, either foolishly attempting to retrieve it or intentionally killing himself because he lost the girl, or out of guilt. She then sits there in quiet horror as her family talks and nonchalantly eats dinner, not knowing that their daughter/sister caused Billy Joe's death.

Or maybe they did know, having disapproved of the relationship and perhaps sabotaged it, secretly gloating over the pain they caused her and their triumph at having caused his death.

And maybe her father didn't die of a virus after all.

[TlalocW]

5. Ironically...

There is no bridge in the song itself.

TlalocW

[ladjf]

14. Well, it comes close to having a bridge. There are 16 bars of the I chord and then it moves

up a fourth, sort of like blues for four bars, followed by one bar of the I chord, 1 bar that chords down a step from the I and ending with two bars of the one chord under a unique set of melodic notes that close out the 32 bar set.

In my mind, the 9th through the 12 bars seem like a bridge. They are definitely a tie between the fist 16 bars and the last 4 bars.

It's a beautifully crafted piece and I love her rendition of it.

[randr]

8. The many great versions of this song

are testament to it's power. My favorite is the Jimmy Smith cover.

[ladjf]

11. Now that's art. The last time I heard it was about thirty five years ago. It's amazing how much

more I heard in the song tonight that I did back then.

It makes me sad now to listen to radio music at restaurants in my hometown. It can best be described as music for morons, i.e. 4 pitches, 1 chord, little or no accompaniment, tempo between 75 and 85 beats per minute, 4/4 time, no change in dynamics, all produced by computers. The only natural thing is the whiny vocal track that is processed by the computer to be in tune and in rhythm. To my knowledge, there is no music anywhere in the history of music that is as crude and dumb as this current radio computer manufactured junk.

Let us hope that this genre will soon pass. I don't even know what it is called.

Please excuse me for going on this rant about some current pop music. Hearing the "Ode to Billie Joe" just reminded me that lora of pop music is most definitely good art.

[WCGreen]

12. One of my favorite songs from my youth....

Andy Williams was pretty cool to put someone out there live...

[nolabear]

19. As a Mississippi girl when this came out I can attest to the fact that she became a goddess.

It really is a gorgeous slice of life about rural Mississippi at that time. We all speculated about the baby, the flowers, the simple thoughtlessness of the family sitting around the suffering daughter shaking their heads over the suicide. I loved it. And Bobbie Gentry was really lovely. I had the album and played hell out of a few of the songs. One was "Crystal Bird", about a strange dream wherein she was a bird made of crystal who could never land because her legs had broken. Sounds bizarre but as an angsty kid I loved it.

On edit: No wonder I couldn't find it. The name is "Refractions". And it's still strange and angst.

[Honeycombe8]

21. I always loved that song. Songs in general that tell a story.

I always figured she had been pregnant and concealed it, adn she and Billy Joe threw the baby off the bridge. Altho how to keep a pregnancy a secret while working on a farm, I can't imagine.

I also liked The Nights That The Lights Went Out in Georgia. Another story in a song.

[Rhiannon12866]

22. I knew all the words to that, back in the day.

Really awesome song, became a national mystery, though I finally saw the movie and that was a huge disappointment, wasn't worthy of the song, IMO.

[In_The_Wind]

23. Indeed!

[Smarmie Doofus]

24. I like the "back to the audience" gambit.

A lot people in front of a mic are easier to take that way. Not Ms. Gentry, necessarily.

[graham4anything]

26. Kristofferson's Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" is very similiar in two ways

Kristofferson's intent was hijacked by people who think it meant what the republican/teaparty/libertarians thought it meant.
What the pseudo-constitutionalists said it meant, but in fact, it meant the exact opposite.

It meant that yeah, sure, one can be free, but freedom is howling at the moon over all that was lost in the utter lunacy of wanting to be free. One is free to be a rebel, but the outcome later means you howl at the moon over all you lost by now being 100% free.

Same here.

Bullying is what happened.
and carrying it to the extreme, where utter freedom is needed (hence jumping off the bridge).

It's just backward.

Another great song of the same era was Tom T Hall's "Harper Valley PTA"
which is so spot-on, it could describe the Tea party of today
(Tom wrote it, Jeannie C. Riley had the hit with his song).

[Rowdyboy]

27. I'm in Mississippi so believe me the DJ's down here played it incessantly!

But it was truly a phenomenon

[Ptah]

28. Bobbie Gentry strolls across the Tallahatchie Bridge

[StillStanding]

29. The movie is NOT true...they took "artistic liberties", making up the story on their own...

"The story takes place in Mississippi. ... The movie has been criticized for taking too many artisitc liberties and introducing too much new information that is not even hinted at in the song."http://www.filibustercartoons.com/billyjoe.htm

[arcane1]

30. Isn't it a movie based on a song?

I'd expect some added material unless it's going to be a 3-minute movie.