", In addition to the iconic lyrics that made the final cut, the unused lyrics may showcase Bobbie Gentry's mindset and possible answer to the mystery of what was thrown from the bridge; as well as the narrator's relationship to Billie Joe. we know by the song billy joe was found in the river... there are no witnesses to a jumping or suicide... what we know about billy joe is "had no sense" and like to joke around and was last seen giving no indication he was about to commit suicide..the description of preacher taylor intrigues me..why say "nice young", why not just preacher taylor which might mean not a member of their church but someone they want to know and have him for sunday dinner...after all, he could tell it was billy joe but not the nattator...the song doesnt tell us it was preacher taylor that gave the news, just that he stopped by... Perhaps Billie Joe proposed to the song's narrator and she turned him down, and he felt so dejected that he committed suicide? The original recording of "Ode to Billie Joe", with no other musicians backing Gentry's guitar according to some reports, had eleven verses lasting eight minutes,[6] telling more of Billie Joe's story. An indifference she may have herself for her mother's subsequent loss. The saw mill owner. Morgan says of recording the song with producer Richard Landis, "Richard purposely slowed the record down to make the musical passages through there really feel kind of spooky and eerie. My interpation is the father and bille joe did something and bille joe was killed by the father !no one ever seen him pushed,jump ect was found in the muddy river. which uses the same melody in a lyrical sequel. In the song's final verse, a year has passed. Her brother is intrigued ("I saw him at the sawmill yesterday ... And now you tell me Billie Joe has jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"), but not enough to be distracted from the lunchtime meal. The format of this odd is a style called Southern Gothic. There really is a Tallahatchie Bridge in Money, Mississippi, but Gentry made up the story. Creepy chords give the hint of "this is something very bad." So the song is a tribute to the baby. [25] Billboard rated the record as #3 for the year 1967 and years later, Rolling Stone magazine rated it among the top 500 songs of all time. The Detroit Emeralds released a version of the song as the B-side to their 1968 single, "Shades Down".[43]. A number of jazz versions have been recorded, including Willis Jackson, Howard Roberts, Cal Tjader, Mel Brown, Jimmy Smith, Buddy Rich, King Curtis, Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Really enjoyed reading yours and other peoples' thoughts on the meaning of Ode to Billy Joe and thought I'd throw my own decipherings into the mix. [16] "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who is about a revolution, but it doesn't have a happy ending, since in the end the new regime becomes just like the old one. The only person affected is the narrator; one reviewer commented on "the narrator's family's emotional distance, impassive and unmoved by Billie Joe's death". Gentry won the Best New Artist Grammy the year this was released. The narrator was going to name the baby Billie Joe after the father whose name is Billy Joe. Those questions are of secondary importance in my mind. [28] It is faithful to the story in "Ode to Billie Joe", but has changed the setting to rural Sweden. A commentary published in 2017 in a British newspaper made this comment: "Fifty years on we're no wiser as to why Billie Joe did what he did and in the context of the song and Gentry's intentions, that's just as it should be". Danish rock band Sort Sol released a version of the song on their 1987 album Everything That Rises Must Converge. [48], A comedy group named Slap Happy recorded "Ode to Billy Joel" in the 1980s, which was featured on the Dr. Demento show. At the dinner table, the father seems unmoved, commenting, "Billie Joe never had a lick o' sense", before asking for the biscuits and adding that there's "five more acres in the lower forty, I've got to plow." That verse appears in her handwritten lyrics - it reveals that a girl named "Sally Jane" was left brokenhearted after Billie Joe jumped to his death. In 1967 American/French singer-songwriter Joe Dassin recorded a version in French, titled "Marie-Jeanne". The head of Drake's estate shares his insights on the late folk singer's life and music. The song is a study in unconscious cruelty. [1] The recording remained on the Billboard chart for 20 weeks and was the Number 1 song for four weeks. So the song is a tribute to the baby. But even when I first heard this song 30 years ago, I thought it was about an unwanted pregnancy, abortion, throwing a fetus off a bridge, and then Billy Joe's suicide due to the fact he had just aborted and then threw his own flesh and blood off a bridge and just couldn't live with that scenario in his head. }; A version of the song appears on Tammy Wynette's 1968 album Take Me to Your World / I Don't Wanna Play House, and later on her 1970 Greatest Hits album. Jimmie Haskell's string arrangment on this song, which won a Grammy award, was a masterwork and a feat of innovation. [11] Gentry has, however, commented elsewhere on the song, saying that it is about indifference:[12] the "unconscious cruelty" of the family when discussing the reported suicide.[13][14]. The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes. Patty Smyth covered the song on the Tom Scott and the L.A. Express album Smokin' Section (1999). [3] "Ode to Billie Joe" has since made Rolling Stone's lists of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" and the "100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time" and Pitchfork's "200 Best Songs of the 1960s". Hearsay around the "Tallahatchie Bridge" forms the narrative and musical hook. Ray Bryant also released a version that year that made #89. [47] The shocking event buried in all the mundane details is the revelation that "The Vice-President's gone mad!". [8] Her mother notices her change of mood following the news ("Child, what's happened to your appetite? General CommentI think the meaning of it has to do with the fact that Billy Joe was her boyfriend, but the family was clueless about that fact. artist: "Bobbie Gentry", Thanks........... im stuck on billie joe jumping off a 20 ft bridge and dieing (thats the height of bridge) muddy water tells me its deep also would break bones but besides that everyone misses that her father dies of a virus less then a yr later puzzles me ? [19], The first page has been published and includes these words not in the final recording. The name of Billie Joe was changed to the Swedish name Jon Andreas. First, the illustration of a group of people's reactions to the life and death of Billie Joe, and its subsequent effect on their lives, is made. The father died from a viral infection and the mother is despondent ("Mama doesn't seem to want to do much of anything"). He recalls a prank that he, "Tom", and Billie Joe played on the narrator, by putting a frog down her back at the Carroll County picture show. The narrator is one of the sons of the household, and the character who committed suicide is a girl named Marie-Jeanne Guillaume. [23] The song started as #71 on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 5, 1967, and reached the #1 spot on August 26. Industry wisdom said … The film was released in 1976, directed and produced by Max Baer, Jr, and starring Robby Benson and Glynnis O'Connor. It crossed the Tallahatchie River at Money, about ten miles (16 km) north of Greenwood, Mississippi, and has since been rebuilt. Sinéad O'Connor released a version of this song in 1995.[44]. /* TFP - lyricinterpretations */ "Ode to Billie Joe" is a song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a singer-songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. The story of how this song was recorded is rather opaque, complicated by lawsuits and by Gentry refusing interviews after she left the industry. Certainly there are no women executives and producers to speak of in the record business. It wasn't easy. [15], The bridge mentioned in this song collapsed in June 1972 after a fire. Otis Redding often ad-libbed vocals at the end of songs, but for "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay" he just whistled instead - it became the most famous whistling in song history. Since the bridge height was only 20 feet (6 m), death or serious injury was unlikely. Running 4:13, this song was longer than most hits of the era, and the longest #1 of 1967. [11] In Raucher's novel and screenplay, Billy Joe kills himself after a drunken homosexual experience, and the object thrown from the bridge is the narrator's ragdoll.