Though today shows no signs of being especially dusty (or indeed delta), it IS the third of June, which means it’s the very day Bobbie Gentry—or her first person narrator, anyway—first hears the news from her mama that Billie Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie bridge, in one of the most haunting pop songs ever recorded.
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.”
The song was released in July of 1967—less than two months into the so-called Summer of Love during which the Beatles had released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—and quickly became a number one hit. It stayed at number one for a month, between “All You Need Is Love” and “The Letter,” by the Box Tops, then spent the next 51 years and counting in permanent rotation on the radio stations (and karaoke playlists) of the world.
Many people have speculated about the ode’s narrative, particularly the question of what Billie Joe and the girl who “looked a lot like” the narrator threw off the bridge, which has served just as powerfully as the spooky, narcotic string arrangement—which was stapled onto Gentry’s existing acoustic demo—to perpetuate the song’s enigma over the years. But the way the story is told, and the bits left out of it, make a strong case that its real subject isn’t forbidden love or even abortion (as many have argued), but rather the way some families fail to address, and thereby compound, the grief and trauma that haunt us.
But that’s doesn’t begin to capture the weird, sad, eerie ache in the song’s heart of hearts.
For a very thorough and fascinating dive into the knotty mysteries of “Ode to Billie Joe,” and even more thorough exploration of the (even more knottily mysterious) life and career of its author, Bobbie Gentry, you owe it to yourself to listen to this episode of the unbelievably excellent country music history podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones.
From Tyler Mahan Coe’s transcript:
The thing about the MacGuffin in “Ode to Billie Joe” is that it’s so subtle you could listen to the song 50 times and never notice that it’s there. Except radio DJs, music writers, people like me and pretty much the entire media grabbed onto it in July of 1967 and never let go.
Anyone can use a MacGuffin. There’s nothing special about it. It may be what generated so much of the original hype but this song isn’t still held in such high critical regard because it made us all wonder what was thrown off a bridge.
In her own words, as told to the interviewer 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.” – Bobbie Gentry
I think what she’s saying there is that it wouldn’t matter if you did know what was thrown off the bridge because you still wouldn’t be able to connect with this girl’s trauma. Her own family can’t connect to it and you don’t even know this girl’s name.
It’s about how nobody can ever truly feel anyone else’s pain and most of the time they can’t even be bothered to try.
There’s a lot more.
If after listening to “Bobbie Gentry: Exit Stage Left” you find yourself unable to resist listening to the 14 other C&R episodes, even despite having anywhere between zero and mild interest in country music or culture, you won’t be alone. Nor will you be alone in eagerly anticipating the next season of this stringently researched, massively informative, and audaciously opinionated series.
Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Coe, so are we.
