Bobbie Gentry had not yet turned 23 when this album
was released, and the title-song caught people completely off guard.
There was nothing like it out there in radio-land. As it hit # 1
(replacing The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” – the album actually
replaced “Sgt. Pepper” on the top spot, making her feat even more
astonishing) the summer of love had turned to autumn, and it sounded
like a hangover.
The naked arrangement forces the listener to focus his attention on
Bobbie’s remarkable voice, dark and smoky, and the story it unfolds. She
speaks as much as she sings over her own spartan, rippling guitar
accompaniment against an angular, obliquely falling string arrangement
that highlights the dark and haunting lyrics.
God knows why “Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie
Bridge”, and what “somethin’” he had thrown into the river, she never
lets us know, but the suicide is given a gothic setting the way it is
discussed around a dinner table with constant interruptions as “pass the
biscuits, please” and “I’ll have another piece of apple pie”.
The song predates “Twin Peaks” by 23 years and might have given David
Lynch some ideas. It was actually turned into a movie in 1976, but after
a promising start the mystery evolves into some muddy storytelling and
we are left with a stack of missed opportunities, unfortunately.
The rest of the album stays faithful to the
arrangements of the title track. Bobbie’s dark and sultry voice and
staccato guitar strumming is spellbinding, and her storytelling lyrics
never short of fascinating, though none of them are as creepy as the
title cut. If you buy this album you are in for a treat as it doesn’t
sound like anything you’ve heard before.
Bobbie went on to great things after this stunning debut, but she never
repeated its style and arrangements, though her songwriting did stay
close to her Mississippi roots. She clocked up 10 hits on the Billboard
Hot 100 between 1967 and 1976, including three duets with Glen Campbell.
Her biggest hit in the UK was a marvelous version of the
Bacharach/David-chestnut “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” lifted from her
superb 1969-album “Touch ‘Em With Love”. Her career took her to Vegas,
and she had her own TV-series running in Great Britain.
Bobbie was one of the first women who wrote and produced herself; she
was a feminist, not common for a country star. In 1978, at the age of
34, she packed up and left showbiz as it didn’t appeal to her anymore.
She shuns media, a fact that has turned her into a fascinating mystery
in herself. In 2012 BBC broadcast a radio documentary entitled ‘Whatever
Happened to Bobbie Gentry?’
As for “Ode To Billie Joe”, the song has had a lasting impact on popular
music. In 2011 Joe Henry cited the song as an early influence,
elaborating: “an incredibly deft bit of writing in the way that that
story is unfolded. ... [I]t places the character in a moment, and then
the story just starts to unfold around it”.
Released: July 1967
Produced by: Kelly Gordon
(All tracks by Bobbie Gentry; except where indicated)
Side 1
“Mississippi Delta” – 3:05
“I Saw an Angel Die” – 2:56
“Chickasaw County Child” – 2:45
“Sunday Best” – 2:50
“Niki Hoeky” (Jim Ford, Lolly Vegas, Pat Vegas) – 2:45
Side 2
“Papa, Woncha Let Me Go to Town With You?” – 2:30
“Bugs” – 2:05
“Hurry, Tuesday Child” – 3:52
“Lazy Willie” – 2:36
“Ode to Billie Joe” – 4:15
