Song What Tme Bestows Youthful Innocence I Found My Feet Again

Bobbie Gentry'due south "Ode To Billie Joe"

In August 1967, Lyndon Johnson announced that he was sending 45,000 more troops to Vietnam. Black power advocate Stokely Carmichael called for violent revolution in the streets. Beatles manager Brian Epstein died from an overdose of sleeping pills. But effectually water coolers, the hot topic was what Billie Joe McAllister and his girlfriend threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

The mystery created by Bobbie Gentry in her debut single "Ode To Billie Joe" bandage a spell over the entire state. Set to a backing of spare acoustic guitar chords and atmospheric strings, Gentry's sensual, Southern-fried voice relates the story of ii Mississippi teenage lovers who share a nighttime secret that somewhen leads to the boy's suicide. And over twoscore years subsequently, despite cinematic details in the vocal's lyric, we nevertheless don't know exactly what happened upward there on Choctaw Ridge.

Bobbie Gentry was built-in Roberta Lee Streeter on July 27, 1944 in Chickasaw County, Mississippi. In the few interviews that she gave, Gentry touched briefly on her rural upbringing, saying, "Nosotros didn't have electricity, and I didn't have many playthings."

She did have music though. From the gospel sounds of the local Baptist church to sometime folk songs, Bobbie was fascinated. "My grandmother noticed how much I liked music, so she traded one of her milk cows for a neighbor's piano," Gentry said. Taking to the instrument immediately, she wrote her first song at age 7, a ditty called "My Domestic dog Sergeant is a Good Dog." Subsequently her parents divorced, 13-twelvemonth-old Bobbie moved to Palm Springs, Calif. with her mother, who quickly remarried. With the family's improved fortunes, Bobbie taught herself guitar, banjo, bass and vibes. As a teenager, she started playing gigs at a local country guild, taking her stage proper name from Cerise Gentry, a moving picture about a poor, rurual seductress.

After graduating high school, Bobbie, by then a raven-haired beauty, went to Vegas, where she worked in a Folies Bergere–style review, dancing and singing. In the mid-'60s, she moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA, finally landing at the Conservatory of Music, where she studied limerick and arranging. A demo record she made ended up on the desk of Capitol Records A&R human Kelly Gordon.

"Ode" was recorded on July 10, 1967 at Studio C in the Capitol belfry. Accompanying herself on guitar, Bobbie nailed a keeper accept in 40 minutes. Arranger Jimmie Haskell told MOJO, "I asked Kelly, 'What exercise you want me to practice?' He said, 'Just put some strings on it so nosotros won't be embarrassed. No one will ever hear information technology anyway.' The song sounded to me like a movie—those wonderful lyrics. I had a pocket-sized group of strings—ii cellos and iv violins to fit her guitar-playing. I was branching out in my own head for the offset time, creating something that I liked considering we idea no one was ever gonna hear it."

The finished version of "Ode" was over vii minutes long. Capitol edited information technology down to a more manageable four minutes and stuck it on the flip side of "Mississippi Delta." Merely those were the days when DJs still had minds of their own, and as in the stories of then many classic hits, the B-side became the A-side.

It sounded like nothing else on the radio, Gentry'due south husky voice inviting listeners into a world that was as dark and exotic as a Flannery O'Connor story. Not long later on the vocal's debut, the water cooler talk started.

Equally Gentry told Fred Bronson, "The song is sort of a study in unconscious cruelty. Simply everybody seems more concerned with what was thrown off the bridge than they are with the thoughtlessness of the people expressed in the vocal. What was thrown off the bridge really isn't that important.

"Everybody has a dissimilar judge about what was thrown off the span—flowers, a ring, even a infant. Anyone who hears the song can think what they desire, but the real bulletin of the song, if there must be a message, revolves effectually the nonchalant fashion the family unit talks almost the suicide. They sit there eating their peas and apple tree pie and talking, without even realizing that Billie Joe'southward girlfriend is sitting at the table, a member of the family."

In its first week of release, "Ode" sold 750,000 copies, knocking "All You Demand Is Honey" out of the top spot on the Billboard nautical chart. It stayed there for iv weeks. The song won Gentry three Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist (she was the starting time Land artist to ever win in this category).

The enigma of her best-known vocal is nothing compared to that of Bobbie Gentry herself. In the early '70s, she was riding high—headlining in Vegas, duetting with Glen Campbell on several hits, hosting her ain TV series. Then around 1975, after contributing music to a moving picture based on "Ode," she simply checked out. She has not been heard from in over 35 years. All requests for interviews, recordings and performances take been denied. She is said to be living in the Los Angeles area.

— By Bill DeMain

From Performing Songwriter Issue 87

Category: In Case You Haven't Heard

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Source: https://performingsongwriter.com/bobbie-gentry-ode-billie-joe/

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