Note: The actual title of this famous song is “Ode to Billie Joe” but it is commonly referenced and searched for as “Ode to Billy Joe.”

Ode to Billy Joe is a song written and performed originally by Bobbie Gentry. Released in July 1967, it quickly became a hit and held at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for four weeks. The song’s haunting melody and enigmatic lyrics cast a spell which left listeners questioning the meaning behind the story…and LIFE.

The song tells of a teenage girl from the Mississippi Delta and a boy named Billy Joe McAllister. The girl’s family is poor and struggles to make ends meet, but she finds solace in her friendship with Billy Joe and others. One day, while the family is having dinner, the girl learns that Billy Joe has jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge and died.

The song is a beautiful poem, really, and seemingly filled with symbolism and hidden meanings. Did the Tallahatchie Bridge represent a divide between the girl’s and Billy Joe’s world and the rest of society? Why did Billy Joe jump off the bridge? And what could she and Billy Joe have possibly been throwing off that same bridge? Does the girl’s family’s indifference to the news of his death suggest a larger societal indifference to the struggles of the poor, or the young, or just a bleak acceptance that “shit happens”? Life goes on.

Gentry was born Roberta Lee Streeter on July 27, 1942, near Woodland in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, to Ruby Lee (née Shipman; November 28, 1920 – April 2, 1989) and Robert Harrison Streeter. After her parents divorced shortly after her birth, her mother moved to California, leaving Gentry to be raised on a farm by her paternal grandparents. She grew up without electricity or plumbing. Her grandmother traded one of the family’s milk cows for a neighbor’s piano, and, at age seven, Gentry composed her first song, “My Dog Sergeant Is a Good Dog.” Gentry lived in Greenwood, Mississippi, with her father for a few years and learned to play the guitar and banjo.

Wikipedia

Having grown up in the period between the Great Depression and World War II, Gentry clearly lived through some troubled times. The darkness of her song perhaps was a reflection of her family’s, and the nation’s, general sense of hopelessness during that time.

Upon its release in ’67, the song immediately resonated with audiences who were grappling with issues of race, poverty, and social inequality. The song’s ambiguous ending still leaves listeners with a feeling of unease and a morbid desire to know if something truly tragic happened to a friend of hers. It has been reported that the song was inspired by the 1954 murder of Emmett Till. (Till was only 14 years old when he was shot and thrown over the Black Bayou Bridge in Mississippi for offending a woman in a grocery store.)

Ode to Billy Joe was written during the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-60s at the height of the Vietnam War. As in her childhood years, America was reeling. The song’s themes of social injustice, personal tragedy, and lost innocence were all subjects written about by many of the greatest artists of the era, including Bob Dylan, who was America’s de facto poet laureate.

Despite its success, Bobbie Gentry never explained the meaning behind the song. Like Dylan, she left it up to the listener to interpret the story in their own way. This has led to countless theories and discussions over the years about what might have really happened to Billy Joe.

Some have suggested that Billy Joe represents the Vietnam War and that his death symbolizes the tragedy of that conflict. Others have argued that the song is a commentary on the societal pressures faced by women in the 1960s.

Perhaps all the speculation is moot: maybe there’s no intended symbolism at all. Maybe it’s just a song about a girl who tragically lost a friend.

Whatever the true meaning of the song may be, it has remained a beloved classic (even a standard) for over 50 years. Ode to Billy Joe has been covered countless times by such diverse artists as Elvis Presley, Tammy Wynette, and Sinead O’Connor. More recently it has been referenced in popular culture, in the Academy Award winning movie The Help and the much praised (and binged!) television show Mad Men.

But Bobbie Gentry was no one hit wonder. She also wrote the song “Fancy,” which was a cross-over country and pop hit for Gentry in early 1970. That same song, two decades later, was recorded by Reba McEntire and became a top ten country hit.

In 1991, Reba McEntire took the song to number eight on the Billboard Country charts. McEntire also produced a popular music video for the song, expanding on the song’s storyline. For years, McEntire has encored her live concerts with the hit, singing the first half of the song in a ragged black mink coat and hat then removing them to reveal a floor length red gown for the second half. McEntire has referred to the song as her “possible signature hit”. (The edit of the song heard on most radio stations cuts the song short after three verses, before the title character makes it off the streets.) Since 1984, Reba wanted to record it but her producer at the time, Jimmy Bowen was against it because he believed the song was too closely associated to Gentry. When Reba changed producers to Tony Brown, she was able to record it for her 1990 album Rumor Has It…as of 2019 the song had sold 760,000 copies in the United States.

Wikipedia

Ode to Billy Joe Lyrics

(Words and Music by Bobbie Gentry)

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

Library of Congress press release announcing the 2023 Registry.

Ode to Billy Joe Added to the National Registry in 2023

“Ode to Billie Joe” (single). Bobbie Gentry. (1967)

Imagery, as vivid as any Southern Gothic novel, meets superlative storytelling and musicianship in this 1967 country classic. It was not, necessarily, a local death that singer/songwriter Bobbie Gentry wanted to explore with the writing of this song but, rather, the banality with which many of us greet and process news regarding the tragedy of others:  “Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please.” Spare and arresting, and written and recorded when Gentry was only 25 years old, its release in July of ’67 was a distinctive break from most country music of the era, and it resonated strongly with country, pop and R&B audiences. In 1976, “Ode” would inspire a big screen film adaptation and return to the charts, powered once more by its fable-like quality and its central mystery that we are still debating over 50 years since it was proffered to us. 

National Recording Preservation Board

Ode to Billy Joe Movie

Ode to Billy Joe is a 1976 American drama film, directed and produced by Max Baer Jr., with a screenplay by Herman Raucher, and starring Robby Benson and Glynnis O’Connor. It is inspired by the 1967 hit song by Bobbie Gentry, titled “Ode to Billie Joe.”

Made for $1.1 million, the film grossed $27 million at the box office, plus earnings in excess of $2.65 million in the foreign market, $4.75 million from television, and $2.5 million from video. However, reviews were mostly negative.

Gentry’s song recounts the day when Billie Joe McAllister committed suicide by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge on Choctaw Ridge, Mississippi. When Gentry discussed the screenplay with Raucher, she explained she did not know why the real person who inspired the character of Billie Joe had killed himself. Raucher thus had a free hand to pick a reason. His novelization of the story, published the year of the film’s release as a movie tie-in, used the same rationale for the suicide.

Wikipedia