Ode to Billie Joe - Tallahatchie bridge, hope you are all like it . this is not my production , not my song , not my owner ship . i'm just share it with some of my friends . and i got it from an youtube up loader.
This song really pulls you in and then drops out from underneath you. It just leaves you hanging with questions. A well sung story designed to do just that.
I've chopped cotton, passed the black eyed peas and cornbread. Never went to the Carroll Co picture show but have been to Tupelo and I've jumped off the Tallahatchie bridge in Greenwood many times! There's a marker there commemorating the song and the artist.
This is one of the few songs that holds up as a poem without the music. I would have expected more. I would have expected she would have turned into a poet at some point.
@@CodyjoClay She was a poet and that song is poetry. I don't think James Dickey or Robert Penn Warren wrote a better line than this: And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the black-eyed peas "Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits, please" Bob Dylan never got lines this good.
I bought the single when it came out. If this song doesn't make you think, nothing ever will, and you make up your own truths about the story. Magical.
Of course there are many truths of what the story could possibly be a walk to actually be there I'll just want to let you know you jump off a Bridge he better make sure deep where you land
Exactly!! I've always been drawn to this song and wondered about the lyrics. Now I've come to the conclusion that her and Billie-Jo were together, they had a baby (which back in the day would've been scandalous), she gave birth to possibly a deceased baby or unwanted or very much wanted but couldn't keep and threw they threw the baby over into the river. Hence her visiting the bridge and throwing picked flowers into the river - to remember Billie-Jo and their baby 😢
Everything was amazing back then music wise. Rock, Soul, Country, and the ballads like this one that were written and sung. Magical is a great description. The children of the Greatest Generation just killed it music wise, probably for a number of reasons.
I heard this song many decades ago and really loved it. I heard it again recently and it's absolutely stuck in my head. What a beautiful voice and song. Just really funny to wonder who are the 49 people that gave it thumbs down, wow.
It came out in the 60's. I think it was 1967 I was 12 years old. Use to listen to it all the time on the radio in my dad's car, usually we were going out somewhere as a family (my mom, brother, sister, mother, father & me). This song would always come on. Fond memories with my family. My mother, father, and sister are gone now. Great family memories.
I was in my teens, driving back solo crosscountry from San Bernandino California to Savannah, Georgia....... an incredible summer compliments of my parents sponsoring a group of college kids to go to Campus Crusade for Christ for the summer.......I was the tag-along part of the sponsorship. It was an absolutely incredible summer which I'm still dealing with, Christ versus the mammon.......But soloing back home in that old VW bus that summer seemed almost pivotal..... The Good Lord watched after me in more ways than one and I survived the trip.......while listening to this song. It almost sends chills up my back the very rare times I hear it now. Thank You, Lord.
Lol I know thats it's been 2 years now but might I recommend a tune that strikes my very soul, I hope its enjoyed ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tYuqnUs9gP8.html
Singer is Bobbie Gentry...a very talented singer! She had a few hits back in the 1960's. But...she was also startlingly beautiful..and she caught the eye of a very wealthy man..got married and we never got to hear her again!! Her other song I absolutely LOVED was "Fancy"!!
I heard this song as a teenager over a retchy FM radio from Shillong that occasionally reach Tamenglong on good days. It was back in the 90s and I heard it only once but I never forgot. It's the kind of song that stays with you forever.
On this date (June 20th) in 1972, the Tallahatchie Bridge collapsed into the Tallahatchie River after vandals set it on fire. It gained notoriety in the 1967 song by Bobbie Gentry.
Hauntingly beautiful. The lyrics and the string arrangement and the vocal performance are so arresting and powerful that it is hard to describe. This song is why I m a song writer today and most of my entire life. The powerful and sad truth in this song could only come from the South. A hell of a lot less bullshit down there.
Is it possible that Ode to Billie Joe (1967), is really a veiled Ode to Emmett Till? Three days after his abduction and murder (August 28, 1955), Till's swollen and disfigured body was found by two boys who were fishing in the Tallahatchie River. Bobbie Gentry was born Roberta Lee Streeter; July 27, 1944. I'm not suggesting he was murdered for talking with her, but rather, the brutality of the murder shocked her because it literally could have been anyone; I'm only theorizing that she felt his murder deeply and personally, as a very strong warning to stay away from boys who were not white. He was 14 she would have been 11 at the time. Choctaw Ridge is in Carroll County, the Bryant store in Money is in Leflore County, they are right next to each other.
I always thought the line about "throwing something off the tallahatchie bridge" suggested it wasn't suicide, it was murder ... so maybe yes, it's that infamous one.
@@jeffreyblumenthal3057 What they threw off the bridge was a baby. It isn't clear, but it is implied that the baby might have been alive. The guilt for his role in what they did drove him to suicide. The girl who thoughts are the song's lyrics, must have known about the pregnancy and realizes what must have happened.
A friend called me today, June 3, and started singing this song to me. I hadn't heard it in a very long time. It brought back alot of old memories of watching Robbie Benson on TV. My granddaughter was buried yesterday, I'm sort of in this daze. Billy Jo must have felt that way. Grief has a way of making you look at life differently.
Really life was not for a lot of people back then . People starved whike others gad plenty . If you were a woman or poc you were automatically less . We need to stop romanticizing these times .
All the locations mentioned in this song are actual locations in the great state of Mississippi, Roberta is still kicking although lately retired. Rest Easy, Billie Joe .
i live 90 miles from choctaw ridge..... my uncle used to go jump off the tallahatchie river bridge for fun...tallahatchie county is right around the corner from where i live too
Now I'm a big grown-up guy, but this song reduces me to tears every time. It shows that incredible sadness can exist even in suburban America. With or without the connection to Emmet Till's murder, it's a very sad story. 😢
I remember the song as a kid. It was only when watching a video called; Hope & Fury, about the Civil rights movement and contribution of media. That the story of Emmett Till, who as a 14-year-old African American was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store. His mutilated body was found in the Tallahatchie River. This song could have been written for him. Never has there been time where Black Lives Matter in persist of equality.
Why does everything have to be about BLM? Like for fucks sake every race has been through what you've been through, yours just happens to be most recent. Except not really because the jews and Asians both went through similar shit that might have been worse and are thriving today. Stop involving everything in that sham of a movement and carry on
I wasn't chopping cotton but my brothers were bailing hay.This song reminds me of Oklahoma being the youngest of 9.this song Carrie's secrets & untold stories. Like a big family tends to do
I used to listen to this song in the late '60s and early '70s. Then Marvel's "Echo" brought me back here today because of "Choctaw". I still don't know why Choctaw Ridge is in Mississippi, while the Choctaw Nation is in Oklahoma? Perhaps I'll come across it someday, but if someone out there can explain it to me here, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you. 01-15-24
I heard it last night watching a movie on a plane headed back to Atlanta from Tampa and it took me back so I had to look it up this remember it back in the day
So talented! A great song perfectly sung. By the way this song was adapted into French called Marie-Jeanne and sung by Joe Dassin (son of film director Jules Dassin).
Don't think there's much of a question. Billy Joe was pregnant. The daughter of this family Was recognized by brother Billy But he just said it looked like her. She and Billy Joe through the newborn baby off the tallahatchee bridge and that's why Billy Joe killed herself and the daughter was depressed, had no appetite , and a year later, threw flowers off Choctaw ridge. I also love this song, the smokey voice and the real life tragedies that happened to young girls who who get pregnant there's no such thing as sex education, there's no such thing as acceptance it's only many times young girls are thrown out of the house...not that far back when.
they say I'm literally "one in a million" that I had it twice -- march 2020 then again in april of 2021 -- since march 2020 I have a cough that comes up every 5 minutes or so.... i can still operate well enough... but, even as a 40 year old guy, i'm unusual, as i used to push myself in a peculiar capacity: i've once held my breath [*after hyperventilating* for those who care] underwater for over 14 minutes [the world record being ~24 minutes]... ... and now it's a struggle to do 1 minute. Literally. Literally, 1 minute is a struggle: to hyperventilate, then hold my breath. I tend to be what one might call "right-wing", but understand... this disease HARMS YOU what no one is talking about, on either end of the political spectrum, is the PERMANENT damage this causes you. Goddamn the CCP, and Fauci et al. for funding it and lying about it, etc.
@@TransRoofKorean I truly care. I’m so sorry this happened to you! I live in a house with a 19 year old daughter and a 6 year old daughter and my parents who are in their 60’s. My dad is a truck driver and I’m positive we also had the virus back before they announced it’s damn arrival! We were told it was just an upper respiratory infection and No Medication! My mom was the worst! At this point all of us adults have taken Moderna, but it leaves me terrified for my youngest! So exactly like you said I’m pissed at our lack of knowledge and how this virus took its toll on all of us without us being properly informed! I still have NO faith we are being told Everything ! Anyway again I’m so sorry and send you positive vibes for healing ❤️🩹
I got this in my discover weekly on Spotify :) awesome song... And you know it's about to be christmas when you spend 2hrs browsing the internet on what these little firecrackers threw off that bridge :D
It was a baby its a sad song really billy joe was depressed because the girl had his baby and it was stillborn and they threw it off the bridge to hide it from her family because they weren't together. Then billy joe jumped too.
Great job Ft Minor this was a deeper level than Ft Minor was on or dimension of speaking thru visions and perception and when you have good morals and know the Holy Spirit it is given not taken or earned or made. It's something you cant order on Amazon or Google or even RU-vid it's something that just is.
Everything about this song, the lyrics ( what is said, and what isn't ) still begs the question after all of these years, what were she and Billy Jo throwing off the Tallahatchie bridge. And did that act cause him to suicide. That's brilliant writing. Lyrical Storytelling set to music. That's why the song has endured. When asked in interviews what was thrown off of the bridge? Bobby Gentry's reply: "I really don't know". So, since most writers, poets, song writers write from their own experiences, possible she didn't. She just wrote a story telling ode that creatively took on its own life.
A baby. Billie-Jo and her had a stillborn baby out of wedlock. They couldn't tell anyone because... well.. ya'know?! Billie Jo became suicidal because of his baby's death and ultimate 'resting place' and decided to be with his child.
Beautiful voice, I've never heard anything like it. I honestly thought she was of African decent the first time I heard it. Regardless who sang it, still beautiful voice.
OMG, I was just telling my mom that I thought she was black when I was a kid. 😂 This was my favorite song when I was in the second grade. I used to listen to it on my mom's record player. Still one of my favorites. :)
THis another clasic song with an eerie feeling due to the string arrangment , it really doe suck you in this one , make you own story line or look for the film eithet way this is clasic, simplistic story telling doesnt get beter