55 years on from Bobbie Gentry’s mystic masterpiece ‘Ode to Billy Joe’ and its prescient message
It’s a truth universally unacknowledged that Bobbie Gentry is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. There’s a literary nod in that opening line fit for her too. After all, she is the singing Carson McCullers—an outpost of classic Southern mysticism woven with the weathered air of a crooked history and a backbone as tough as old boots holding everything upstanding. And sadly, all too often overlooked in favour of gaudier lights and the names displayed in them.
With wit and wisdom, Gentry conjured the sort of songs that you can sink into. The atmosphere embalms them with pillow-propped dreaminess, and the alluring tales add quilted depth, both coming together to cast a shadow from worldly distractions. They ensure you leaf through the tome of the tunes with the piqued ear of a Doberman on nightshift.
In this regard, the classic ‘Ode to Billy Joe’ is her definitive anthem. It’s the sort of track that, in a bygone era, you would’ve heard crackle its way onto the radio, pull the Chevy Corvair over to the side of a Tupelo-lined roadside, listened to intently, and then drove off sharpish with a chill down your spine. It’s a creepy old track. The sort of earworm that nestles in tightly, like a ghost story you heard in the light of day and dismissed with a smile, but you can’t shake when the lights go off.
With the dusty old tune, she crafted a mystery for the ages that alluringly begs a million more questions than it answers, but unlike some Netflix series ending that is holding out for a sequel, it leaves you the opposite of frustrated. You are beguiled by her rhythmic prose that serves as an engine of atmosphere, and her narrative is one with a swirling depth of subtext akin to the pages of Flannery O’Connor.
And that’s where this old folk ditty truly triumphs: it’s evident that there is more to the tale than meets the eye and that translucent mystery extents a come-hither finger through the haze that few have dared to follow. It’s a song about death; however, death is dealt with in the same jejune everyday way as table salt, only adding to the mystery itself. Fortunately, Gentry offered a clue while stating: “The message of the song revolves around the nonchalant way the family talks about the suicide. The song is a study in unconscious cruelty”.
The folks at the forefront of our tale are blasé about a human atrocity, and that only perpetuates the problem. That’s a message we have only recently come to terms with—it’s good to talk. As Gentry adds: “It’s entirely a matter of interpretation as from each individual’s viewpoint. But I’ve hoped to get across the basic indifference, the casualness, of people in moments of tragedy. Something terrible has happened, but it’s ‘pass the black-eyed peas’, or ‘y’all remember to wipe your feet’”.
In this way, the twist is almost left lingering in the ear of the beholder, and it’s joyously spooky. What really happened at the Tallahatchie Bridge? That’s the mystery, but as Gentry answers, “Everybody seems more concerned with what was thrown off the bridge than they are with the thoughtlessness of people expressed in the song”. We all know what happened at the bridge was a tragedy, and that should be the focus, not the gossip of the whys and wherefores.
