Considering today was the 3rd of June, I only felt it befitting to share the story behind one of my favorite songs:
"Ode to Billie Joe" is a 1967 ode song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a singer-songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. The single, released in late July, was a number-one hit in the United States, and became a big international seller.
The song is a first-person narrative that reveals a Southern Gothic tale in its verses by including the dialog of the narrator's family at dinner time on the day that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge."
The song begins with the narrator, her brother and her father returning, after morning chores on the farm, to the family house for dinner — on June 3. After cautioning them about tracking in dirt, "Mama" says that she "got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge" that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge," apparently to his death.
At the dinner table, the narrator's father is unsurprised at the news and says, "Well, Billie Joe never had a lick o' sense; pass the biscuits, please" and mentions that there are "five more acres in the lower forty I got to plow." Although her brother seems to be somewhat taken aback ("I saw him at the sawmill yesterday.... And now you tell me Billie Joe has jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"), he's not shocked enough to forego a second piece of pie. The brother recalls that while he was with his friends Tom and Billie Joe, they had put a frog down the narrator's back at the Carroll County Picture Show, and that he had seen her and Billie Joe together last Sunday speaking after church.
Late in the song, Mama questions the narrator's complete change of mood ("Child, what's happened to your appetite? I been cookin' all mornin' and you haven't touched a single bite") and then recalls a visit earlier that morning by Brother Taylor, the local preacher, who mentioned that he had seen Billie Joe and a girl who looked very much like the narrator herself and they were "throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge."
In the song's final verse, a year has passed, during which the narrator's brother has married Becky Thompson, and moved away ("bought a store in Tupelo"). Also, her father died from a viral infection, which has left her mother despondent. ("And now mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything".) The narrator herself now visits Choctaw Ridge often, picking flowers there to drop from the Tallahatchie Bridge into the murky waters flowing beneath.
Questions arose among the listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide? Speculation ran rampant after the song hit the airwaves, and Gentry said in a November 1967 interview that it was the question most asked of her by everyone she met. She named flowers, an engagement ring, a draft card, a bottle of LSD pills, and an aborted baby as the most often guessed items. Although she knew definitely what the item was, she would not reveal it, saying only "Suppose it was a wedding ring." "It's in there for two reasons," she said. "First, it locks up a definite relationship between Billie Joe and the girl telling the story, the girl at the table. Second, the fact that Billie Joe was seen throwing something off the bridge — no matter what it was — provides a possible motivation as to why he jumped off the bridge the next day."
The bridge mentioned in this song collapsed in June 1972. It crossed the Tallahatchie River at Money, about ten miles north of Greenwood, Mississippi, and has since been replaced. The November 10, 1967 issue of Life Magazine contained a photo of Gentry crossing the original bridge.
