BOBBIE GENTRY "ODE TO BILLY JOE" REACTION | Asia and BJ 

Bobby Gentry is my cousin. Her real name is Roberta Streeter. The point of the song is how people continue with life even when tragedy occurs. It leaves up to the listeners imagination as to what was thrown off the bridge. She has a degree in philosophy and also designed clothing.

Bobby Gentry was a well educated woman with a degree in philosophy. She wrote the song to bring people's attention to how people sit around in common situations and talk without thinking about how their conversations might affect others around them. I remember as a teenager, my mom sat me down to teach me that very lesson using this song. My mom explained how well educated Bobbie Gentry was and told me that we all need to be mindful and aware how and what we say in our everyday activities because we never know how it will affect those listening. Mom then played the song for me and had me listen to the lyrics. As a teen, I realized that the girl in the story was more than likely in love with Billy Joe and no one around her even knew it, Not her mom, dad or brother. It actually made me cry and still does today.

She's storytelling - she's got us all at that dinner table with her.

She knocked the Beatles off the #1 spot on the charts! Her voice is like no other. Thanks for the review!

I heard this song shortly after it came out, as a small child. It's haunting. As I grew up the invisible child, I totally felt the "no one notices or cares" vibe of the story. The brother found out his friend he saw yesterday committed suicide and just asks for more pie. The singer, the daughter, was hiding that she was dating him and feels so sick she can't eat. The mom seems to know but doesn't care. The dad didn't like him and is apathetic to his death. Then the daughter spends the next year on the bridge, and no one notices that she might be thinking of joining Billie Joe. To me, it was so tragic that the boy would die, the girl be in pain, and her family went on as if it was all nothing. I think it got popular due to the mystery. Did they drop a baby in the river? Flowers? But Bobby said years later it was about the unconscious cruelty of people.

The crescendo that seems like it's missing (musically), actually occurs when the listener realizes that the author was in love with Billy Joe...regardless of what was thrown off the bridge - it's about a silent grief that nobody else at the dinner table even knew about.

Bobbie was 26 years old in this video. She's still alive and kicking at 79 years old but a bit of a recluse now. If y'all haven't done it yet you'll love Harper Valley PTA by Jeannie C. Reilly!

This song still gets tongues wagging after 40+ years. That's really something!

She paints such a vivid picture of the deep south in the sixties. Even though it's never mentioned, l can see the house with the porch and the wood screen door. The haunting guitar chords and the brilliant strings create the hot and humid mood. I was 14 years old in 1968. This was a summer song and got a lot of airplay during a summer of turmoil. Love your reactions.

"He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Chocktaw Ridge...and she and Billie Joe was throwing something off the Tallehatchie Bridge." I always got the feeling she (the singer/narrator) was Billie Joe's secret girlfriend, since her daddy didn't approve of him, and she's sitting there listening to her family blow off his suicide while she's sitting in shock and grief. IMHO, anyway.

Bobbie Gentry was an amazing woman who was ahead of her time. One of the first to produce her own music. She finally had her fill of the industry and disappeared. She is quite a story. She has lived off the grid so to speak for many years.

I've been trying to figure out the story for over half a century. And I still have a crush on Bobbie Gentry. Another one of her hits was 'Fancy'.

This song charted in Country, Blues and Rock charts when released. An absolute MASTERPIECE! The song goes in and out of being retrospective and first person, in, out, in,out...... hauntingly beautiful! TY for reacting.

I have no idea what other people call her style, but I think of it as a fusion of country and blues.

Also; Bobbi Gentry's "Son Of A Preacher Man" is another great song.

I always took it as she and Billy had a child together but due to fear they threw the baby off of the bridge and then Billy could not live with himself and at the ens she was thinking about joining him and their child. The song is haunting and beautiful.

I was 18 when this came out. Notice the “life goes on” attitude as they simply eat as this devastating news comes out. She is emphasizing how their lives go on even though Billie Joe has died. They eat, pass the sides, eat the pie. Life goes on….

takes me back to my high school years in Louisiana - the manners, the sights, the dismissive way they talk about another person death as of no importance while it breaks the heart of the singer!!! This is an "old time ballad" it tells a story while it draws you in to the story - not the music!!!

This one's a great "southern gothic" mystery - somewhat in feel to Vicki Lawrence's - The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia (covered by Reba McEntire).

Bobbie Gentry was a stunningly beautiful woman with a unique singing voice! This song is haunting!

Bobbie (not Bobby) Gentry did a USO tour for the GIs in Vietnam a year earlier that my stepfather was at. When he came home, he could not get enough of her and her music. I heard her music almost every night.

It's completely unique. She is singing a movie. It all plays out in your head. She sings just slow enough you can vision it in your mind.

People have speculated ever since this song came out about what they threw off the bridge and why Billie Joe committed suicide. Bobbie Gentry herself said the song wasn't about that, but was really "a study in unconscious cruelty." The family sat around the dinner table and talked about what happened as if it were just some little thing, while missing the fact that the daughter was so upset that she couldn't even eat. Everyone else had a hearty appetite. There was a movie based on the song that explained what they threw off the bridge and why Billie Joe killed himself. It didn't make much money, and it's best forgotten, in my opinion. The song is better for being a mystery.

This song knocked The Beatles off of the #1 spot on the charts and held it for four weeks.

It's called Southern gothic. A dark subject maybe a mystery

Big hats off to the production team on the BBC for this, they captured it beautifully.

I was a 12 year old kid back when this came out. It seemed like no matter what radio station you tuned into, Rock, Country western, there was a good chance they were playing this song. It was Haunting, and even a little bit scary as a kid to listen to this story. Especially with Bobbie Gentry's fantastic narration. Was it murder? and who was involved. Suicide" what really happened?

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.”

A lot of great comments below, and yes the song is about how casual everyone was at the dinner table even though this tradgic event happened. But another thing was, the family didn't even realize that Bobby was Billy Joe's girl, there fore she lost her appetite. 🤔🤔😎

Great performance by Bobbie of her amazing number-one hit mystery song. Cool reaction.

It represents the indifference of people around the singer who don't recognize her pain and to the death of Billie Joe.

I've always interpreted this song as she and Billy Joe were lovers, she got pregnant and either had an abortion or miscarried. They tossed the fetus off the bridge, Billy couldn't handle it emotionally and committed suicide later. Grim, but that's the story I got out of the lyrics of this song.

They made a whole movie out of this song - and some mysteries are all the better for not being solved!

It’s folk, and she wrote it, but what she does is tell two stories at once. She paints a southern dinner that I might have been at and tells the story of death at the same time, supercraft! She wrote it, she sang it, and she played the guitar in it, and she was gorgeous.

For me, it's all about how they are casually having dinner conversation about Billy Joe. The song was written in definite conversational style.

What makes the song great isn’t the answers, but the questions left unanswered.

I was 5 years old when this cam out, but my mother listened to nothing but country music and I rmemeber all through the early 70's hearing this song. I can honestly say this is the first time I actually listened to all the words, and her conversational lyrics put to the guitar, combined with the emotion and everything, was absolute genius.I honestly felt like I was sitting at the dinner table with her.

I'm a baby boomer and I was 13 when this song came out it was one of my favorite songs all through my teenage years and I still love listening to it thanks for reacting to it😊 I have always said that I think the baby boomers had some of the best storytelling songs of all eras....❤

I've fished that river many times. I believe with all my heart that it holds more secrets than will ever be told. The original Tallahatchie River Bridge is no longer in use. My late father in law had one of the cast iron spheres from the top of it. This song is really entwined in my memory and my life. 💜💚💛✌️

It's a video in your mind, singing a story, and singing the video. She definitely gives you the whole experience. Masterpiece ❤

♥️Bobby was of my generation and the song played on the radio remains a mystery which we never solved. She was a genius lyricist and had genius interpreting style.

The jucstposition of the everyday conversation as the darkest secret she's carriying is so powerful an image, but its really clear At the end when u see the flowers floating in the water, there's two pure white flowers.. its symbolic of two lost souls... I felt every single word of this!

I’m from the 60s (60s hippie musician). Back then, the word was she got pregnant from her boyfriend Billie Joe. And abortions were illegal back then. And they weren’t married. So she had a secret abortion and that’s what they were throwing off the bridge, together. And he couldn’t take it and committed suicide. And that’s why she’s always picking flowers and throwing them in the river, in remembrance of her aborted baby, and Billie Joe. But back in the 60s, she couldn’t come right out and say it, she had an abortion. So it was disguised in the song. At least that’s what I recall the backstory was and rumored to have been told by Bobby Gentry.

When they made the movie; the girl leaves town, pretending to be pregnant, to protect the boy;s reputation because he was gay and had a relationship with an older man. Bobbie Gentry got fed up with the changes the record companies wanted her to make and ended up quitting the business. You should check out songs like Refractions; Courtyard & Parchman Farm. She was a story telling genius and they wanted to do the same old stuff that everyone was else was doing; they did not understand what she was about and we lost decades of wonderful music, kerk

It amazes me that the entire family can sit around a table eating and talking about Billy Joe not even realizing the woman who knows him (maybe even loves him) best is sitting at the table with them.

OH, FOR CHRISSAKES!!!! ARE YOU TRULY THAT BLIND??!!! This is, without doubt, the MOST SUBVERSIVE song ever written!!!! The song is about a PREGNANCY by the singer. The father is Billie Joe McAllister. Everyone in the narrator's family is so detached, and in their own worlds, that NOBODY notices her ever swelling belly. She gives birth on Choctaw Ridge (nothing good ever comes from Choctaw Ridge)......with Billy Joe McAllister in attendance. It's a live birth, but each knows, this newborn will be the ruin of both of them in that small Southern town. So.........they kill it, wrap it up, and dump it into to the swift flowing waters beneath the Tallahatchie Bridge. THAT'S what they were seen throwing "something" off the bridge. Billie Joe's guilt finally overwhelms him and he commits suicide by jumping off the bridge. The narrator of the song is WAAAY stronger mentally, and endures not only those two tragedies, but also, the additional ones of her father's death from a "fever" and the subsequent clinical catatonic depression her mother lapses into.

The girl in the song was pregnant. She had a miscarriage. She and Billy Joe tossed the remains off the bridge. Billy Joe's conscience got the best of him. He could not live with what they had done, as she was such a young girl. So he ended it.

I don't think this song is so country as it is blues and soul with a country accent. Her descriptions of place, actions and dialect are all country, but the cadence and rhythm of the guitar are blues. The more I listen to the song, the more I am in awe of Bobby Gentry's masterful story telling. The song appears simple but she uses tone, pitch and cadence in her voice to switch back and forth between perspectives. The orchestration also is used to help her switch the narration. She plays around with phrasing too so that in one measure she can be talking about Billy Joe jumping off the bridge and then a beat later "Pass the biscuit please." It's genius. There is a steady rhythmic pattern to the guitar chords that doesn't change. Her story telling follows the same pattern. For people who have roots in the South it must be wonderful to hear these tiny reminders of life in the South from the food, to the conversation. Again, this is masterful storytelling and reflection.

One of the greatest storytelling songs ever. The lyrics stir your imagination. 🌞

Billy Joe was just a local guy, nobody special. The thing that makes this song unique is the subtlety and restraint she used when telling the story, and how the family sort of casually discussed Billy Joe's death without realizing that Billy Joe had been very significant to the daughter. After hearing the news, she sat there in shock while Papa talked about his plowing and brother asked for another piece of apple pie. You don't find out til near the end about the relationship between the girl and Billy Joe (references to her not touching her food, and spending her time dropping flowers into the Tallahatchie river).

If you like Bobbie Gentry and her storytelling check out "Fancy" another song she wrote and sings

Bobby Gentry wrote and recorded a song about a suicide, which was a subject that NO ONE ever sang about on any record. Virtually all listeners are wondering WHY it happened. Gentry provided only very vague facts about what happened in the song, and the listeners’ minds ran wild with speculation and interpretation of what happened. Was there a secret pregnancy? Was there a stillbirth? Was there a secret abortion that took place? Was Billy Joe murdered, and the entire community outside of Gentry’s female character complicit in a coverup? The interpretations of this song are seemingly endless. The sound quality of the recording is superb for 1967. It sounds as if it was recorded today. There is no echo or reverb typical of 1960s recordings, The sound of Bobby Gentry’s voice, her guitar playing, and the string section, are as clear as the finest crystal glass. This song, and the recording itself, is timeless, and will be amazing future listeners forever.

You are noticing her use of dynamics, very unique. When she sings something about him, it's like her voice catches in her throat.

The general conception in terms of what the female narrator on the song and Billie Joe threw of the bridge was the dead body of their baby child.

She's playing her song, she's telling a story,while mesmerizing us with her image . She's portrayed in black and white.A goddess,with an instrument,oh,and a guitar lol.This is mindplay of a siren

Music was getting very diverse in the 1960s. Talented very young song writers like Carole King and Bob Dylan and the very young rock groups who crowded the radio waves with astonishing sounds. Elvis maybe led the way as many older listeners rejected his exciting sound. Bobby Gentry's song was a hung hit and we absolutely loved it. There was enough unanswered to make us listen over and over. What an era.

I can visualize everything in this song,, she does an amazing job of making you feel like you are there

The great strength of this song is that she doesn't TELL. She shows, not tells, which makes the listener an active participant.

I think what you may be picking up on and trying to attribute a style to, is the conversational nature of the singing. She's playing the parts of each member of a family sitting around the table, having a meal, and each expressing their thought on the gossip/event of the day. One is sayin' "Pity, pity, nothin' good...." and then one of the boys says, " remember that time with the frog at the picture show?". That feeling that she's going into and then out of the song, might be imagined as the next person having their say or maybe even pausing for a few seconds in the middle of a comment to finish chewing then swallowing a bite then finishing the thought, just like would happen at an actual kitchen table conversation, among family. She's just leavin' out the " What I tell you about talkin' with your mouth full?" part. LOL

This song has been a mystery since the 60s. And it's still working.

Her delivery is what made her such a great artist! She puts you right in the middle of this story but leaves you wondering.

So much soul...so much emotion and personal recollection. Wow.. you don't get that today. Gives me chills....really.

Everyone has wanted to know about Billy Joe for over 50 years.

I recall listening to this back when I was in high school. This was a huge hit and really served to establish her reputation as an amazing singer and story teller. Great review.

Did I tell you I do not like country? But I love this one. The way she wrote and sang it makes me cry almost every time. So earthy, so home sounding.

There is actually a movie titled “Ode to Billy Joe.” Came out in the 70s….don’t watch unless you want to be depressed. They didn’t throw a baby off the bridge.

The best way I know how to describe this song (because I grew up listening to this with my mom) is 100% original. The way the violins go up and down in a sort of haunting way, there's nothing else like it. It's put in the same genre as country, but this song is just so beautiful in a haunting way and I've never heard anything even CLOSE to this ever. I highly recommend you watch the movie. People were so captivated by the song that they made a movie about it. It answers questions about what was thrown in the water and it answers why he killed himself and the movie is called "ode to Billy Joe" just like the song. Give it a watch. It's just as amazing as the song!!!

Thanks again to you both from Canada. When I was 13 in 67 this was a big hit, and I still enjoy listening to it. Cheers.

Bobbie Gentry wrote this and a lot of other songs. She insisted on owning the rights to her music and broke new ground for female artists. I believe she retreated from the spotlight early on. This song was a huge crossover hit in the country and pop charts. Great storytelling. Great choice 🌺✌️

Ok I’m 74 and I know what is was it was a baby. She was underage and they were scared to death. So she hid this until the baby was born or miscarriage ( ?) but that’s what they threw off the bridge! I do love you both and these songs were all what I was listening too rock n roll in the 60s and 70s and little from the 80s metal bands. So there it is! I hope I can answer any other questions too! I sang in my brothers rock in roll band in the 60s sang Beatles Rolling Stones and music is in my families blood .

Bobbie Gentry was brilliant. She retired and became a recluse. It has been a mystery all these many years what they threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge and why Billy Joe jumped. June 3rd is Ode to Billy Joe Day.

Bobbie Gentry wrote "Fancy" and she and Reba McKentire made an agreement with royalties and it has been a hit ever since.

This is a folk - country ballad

The way she sang it is much like southerners speak. In a questioning manner at times. Throughout the song it seems like she is having a conversation in her own mind with a questioning manner.

More than 50 years later people are STILL trying to figure out why he jumped and what they threw off. You might have missed the central emotion of the song. She was in love with Billy Joe and her family didn't know; m they talked about his death so casually at the dinner table when her heart was breaking. The popular speculation story I remember from the time is that she and Billy Joe had a secret baby that was born too soon/stillborn so they threw the baby into the river, and Billy Joe was so heartbroken that he killed himself too. THAT is great songwriting.

At first it’s a song about a local tragedy. Then “weren’t you talking to him”, “what happened to your appetite?” That’s when the arrow pierces the heart. Ouch, she was in love with him. Powerful lyrics.

I always loved this song. Lady has a killer voice very rich tone 🧡🧡

This song is the narrative style of storytelling, popular in the sixties. The pauses are meant to create tension and recollection. The inference is that she and Billy Joe were getting rid of a child that she lost in birthing it in secret. She has remorse as to the secret. The movie that was made about this song, had a reference that Billy Joe was gay and committed suicide. The string section adds to the drama of the song.

I remember when it came out (yeah, I'm as old as dirt). Sounds like she's putting a story to music. I also think that she had a fight with her boyfriend Billy Joe, threw the ring into the river, and it hurt him so much that he jumped off the bridge. Well, that's my story anyway.

MOST singer/songwriter's write about their personal experiences or, other folks personal life experiences. I "DEFINITELY" believe, feel, think, that, BG was writing from an experience in her life, when she was younger. OR, telling someone elses story that she was Very, VERY close to. And she put it to pen and paper. Question: Curious. Was there and has ANYONE EVER tried to look up county birth records FOR a Billie Joe McAllister, IN THAT particular state/county/town/city?

Love the strings in this song

Bobby Gentry was singing a song illustrating people's indifference to such a significant event as death through her use of several techniques. She told a story of an average, mundane day juxtaposing Billy Joe's story and their lives. They discuss Billy Joe's death in a very banal, disassociated manner, as if it was just another event in their day. But as far as Billy Joe's story, in my interpretation at least, Billy Joe and Bobby were in a relationship of some sort, Bobby got pregnant, and the baby was what they through off the bridge together that night. Billy Joe felt so guilty that he committed suicide by jumping off the Talahachee Bridge in the same manner he threw his newborn infant off that same bridge. This was also why Bobby had lost her appetite at the dinner table.

This is story telling at its finest.

The girl in the song was in love with Billy Joe. Such a sad song of loss.

Beautiful woman with a fantastic voice, she wrote some great songs

I just love this song and her beautiful singing of it...

the point of the songs is that fact of how cruel people are just discussing the death of someone without really understanding the young woman sat at the dinner table was involved with billie joe and was sad that he had jumped which is why she was not eating.

“Why didn’t anybody find out?”, that’s the kinda stuff then that people didn’t want to know, and if it did, they wouldn’t talk about, part of the point of the song.

Nice take, I enjoy your reactions. I always thought, like from the second to last verse, “Said he saw a girl looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge, and she and Billy Joe was throwing something off the Tallahatchee Bridge.” I always thought… baby?? Then she goes up there a lot and throws flowers. Idk. This is a masterpiece of singing/songwriting, it makes one think. Now check out Violent Femmes “Country Death Song.”

It is an Ode,which is a lyricical poem set to music."Ode To Billy Joe "is a book also there is a movie starring Robbie Benson as Billy Joe McAllister.

Beautiful and haunting, truly a masterpiece

YESS!!! My man got it! Folklore!!! Everyone wants to know. It's just one of those mysteries in life.

Her and Billy Joe threw something off the bridge. What it was is still a mystery. Whatever it was caused Billy to take his life.....There is a movie called Ode to Billy Joe. Might want to check it out.

YES, YES, YES, oh my gosh, what a classic man. Remember this song so well. They don't play music with such heartfelt emotion and feeling today. Love this, thank you for playing this iconic classic song again. Brings back great memories. Gives me chills.

There’s a haunting feeling to the song . I always wondered if this was a story about her or someone very close to her .

Yes Asia, you heard correctly, there is a Jazz component here (I have a 4 year degree in Jazz). Her guitar is a type of Bossa Nova beat - a latin relation of Jazz. I've heard her play an introduction to this song that is pure latin Jazz. But she mixes it so well into Country as BJ expresses. As to the story, I noticed Billie Joe came from a different social class - people think nothing comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge (they mean poor people), and he works at a sawmill, but the girl is of the landowner class and becomes the heiress of the farm. Her Dad doesn't think much of Billie Joe. It would be frowned upon for her to marry a poor working man like Billie Joe. She is his girlfriend and keeps it a secret from her snobbish family. Billie Joe can't see himself with anyone else but her, and he gets weary of the waiting and hopelessness of it all. To make it even worse, "that nice young preacher, brother Taylor" is coming to dinner on Sunday, and he rats on her to her parents that he saw a girl that looked just like her up on Choctaw Ridge with Billie Joe, throwing something into the water. (was it a ring?). The parents are trying to fix her up with the young preacher! The things people do to each other, and social pressure! Bobbie was still a farm girl teenager when she wrote this song!

To fully appreciate this song it has to be listened to in stereo. This mono cut leaves out a lot of effects that add to the song. Maximilian Adalbert Baer Jr. AKA Jethro Bodine from The Beverly Hillbillies produced a movie based on this song with the same name starring Robby Benson and Glynnis O'Connor in 1976. Check it out. Think you may like it. Both the song and the movie are purely fictional. But the locations are from her childhood.

She made a ton of 💰 money, then got out of the music business and disappeared into obscurity. She lives a completely private life since then. She’s a very interesting woman. Check out her song, “Fancy”.

Thank you for reacting to this. The great mystery . What did "they" throw off the bridge?

It's a country story, told in a jazz-inflected style, with a swirling dramatic orchestra backing. Country opera.