The mystery in "Ode to Billy Joe"
Adam Schneider
I was listening to my new Lucinda Williams tape the other day, and I
couldn't help but notice the similarity (in lyrical content) between LW's
new song "Pineola" and "Ode to Billy Joe" by Bobbie Gentry. And then it
occurred to me, has anyone ever figured out exactly what it was that the
girl and Billy Joe were "throwing...off the Tallahatchee bridge"? I've
heard people refer to the mystery of it, but I've never actually heard any
theories...has anyone? Maybe Bobbie Gentry was interviewed once and told
everyone?
Adam
==-=--=---=----=-----=-------=---------=---------=-------=-----=----=---=--=-==
Adam Schneider ind...@ucscb.ucsc.edu U.C. Santa Cruz
"Your actions will follow you full circle 'round..."
==-=--=---=----=-----=-------=---------=---------=-------=-----=----=---=--=-==
kmag...@eagle.wesleyan.edu
>
> I was listening to my new Lucinda Williams tape the other day, and I
> couldn't help but notice the similarity (in lyrical content) between LW's
> new song "Pineola" and "Ode to Billy Joe" by Bobbie Gentry. And then it
> occurred to me, has anyone ever figured out exactly what it was that the
> girl and Billy Joe were "throwing...off the Tallahatchee bridge"? I've
> heard people refer to the mystery of it, but I've never actually heard any
> theories...has anyone? Maybe Bobbie Gentry was interviewed once and told
> everyone?
Well, I haven't heard the song in a long time so I don't
remember much of the story, but I was under the impression
that it was a body.
Karl
Judy Miller
>
> I was listening to my new Lucinda Williams tape the other day, and I
> couldn't help but notice the similarity (in lyrical content) between LW's
> new song "Pineola" and "Ode to Billy Joe" by Bobbie Gentry. And then it
> occurred to me, has anyone ever figured out exactly what it was that the
> girl and Billy Joe were "throwing...off the Tallahatchee bridge"? I've
> heard people refer to the mystery of it, but I've never actually heard any
> theories...has anyone? Maybe Bobbie Gentry was interviewed once and told
> everyone?
>
> Adam
Have you seen the movie?
I wonder how far they strayed from the intent of the song.
In the movie, what was thrown off the bridge was the girl's doll ...
The secret, which Billy Joe couldn't face, was a sexual encounter with
another male ... the preacher, I think.
I do like this song ... anyone know if it's out on CD?
Judy
Jon Berger
>Have you seen the movie?
>I wonder how far they strayed from the intent of the song.
>In the movie, what was thrown off the bridge was the girl's doll ...
>The secret, which Billy Joe couldn't face, was a sexual encounter with
>another male ... the preacher, I think.
Wow, this is weird. I'd never been that much of a fan of the song,
or seen the movie, or paid much attention to the phenomenon in general,
but I had always assumed, just from hearing it on top-40 radio, that
it was "Ode to Billie Jo", that is, that the song was about a female
Billie rather than a male Billy. This casts rather a different light
on it, I must admit. Am I the only one to have suffered under this
misapprehension? Could the use of a gender-ambiguous name have been
another bit of slipperiness on the part of whoever wrote the song?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-__ __ /_ Jon Berger "If you push something hard enough,
//_// //_/ jo...@ingres.com it will fall over."
_/ --------- - Fudd's First Law of Opposition
Daniel Rosenblum
writes:
>In article <1bstcj...@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>, ind...@ucscb.UCSC.EDU
> (Adam Schneider) [asks what it was that the girl and Billy Joe threw
> off the Tallahatchee Bridge].
> Well, I haven't heard the song in a long time so I don't
>remember much of the story, but I was under the impression
>that it was a body.
Somewhere in Pete Seeger's _The_Incompleat_Folksinger_, he
mentions that a lot of African-Americans did a double-take
when they saw publicity photos of the Tallahatchee Bridge.
It seems that Emmett Till was lynched somewhere right near
there, and they had seen lots of pictures of the location
years before. Seeger goes on to say that the wry comment
making the rounds in the Black community was that "WE know
what went over that bridge."
--
Daniel M. Rosenblum, Assistant Professor, Quantitative Studies Area,
Graduate School of Management, Rutgers University (Newark Campus)
ROSE...@DRACO.RUTGERS.EDU ROSE...@ZODIAC.BITnet
d...@andromeda.rutgers.edu ...!rutgers!andromeda.rutgers.edu!dmr
Mark J. Rinehart
My impression from something I had heard a LONNNNNNGGGGGG time ago,
was that it was the body of a child - possibly a fetus.
Mark
n
Toby . Hughes
>
>Wow, this is weird. I'd never been that much of a fan of the song,
>or seen the movie, or paid much attention to the phenomenon in general,
>but I had always assumed, just from hearing it on top-40 radio, that
>it was "Ode to Billie Jo", that is, that the song was about a female
>Billie rather than a male Billy. This casts rather a different light
>on it, I must admit. Am I the only one to have suffered under this
>misapprehension? Could the use of a gender-ambiguous name have been
>another bit of slipperiness on the part of whoever wrote the song?
There was never any gender ambiguity in the song. In Bobbie Gentry's
version the singer is a girl, and the song includes lyrics such as
"I saw him at the sawmill today up on Choctaw Ridge."(referring to BJ.)
^^^
The song was also recorded by a male singer, Lee Hazlewood, and Billy Joe
became Billie Jo, reversing the roles.
As to what they threw off the bridge, Bobbie Gentry once went on record with
the statement that it was the mystery that made the song, and that the mystery
would remain unsolved. Don McLean later used the same device to even greater
success with "American Pie," which triggered a national obsession on figuring
out the "real meaning" of the song.
TH
Gregory Taylor
>> off the Tallahatchee Bridge].
This is why it's good to have people out there who are older than you
are on the net: It was one of those festive holiday kelp loaves that are
packaged to look like canned hams that get given out at Christmas. I
checked it myself [Billy Joe lived next door to my Uncle Don, and her
dad Virgil used to share a do-jig mold with Don]. She chucked it because
it was packaged by some no-account non-union firm in Lafayette; her daddy
would not have the thing in the house. I still don't know why Bobbi made
such a big deal about it.
Hope this helps.
--
I am so lonely for the twentieth century,/for the deeply felt, obscene
graffiti/of armed men and the beautiful bridges/that make them so small and
carry them/into the hearts of cities written like words/across nothing,/the
dense void history became in my beautiful century/gtaylor/608-828-3385
Gregory Taylor
>There was never any gender ambiguity in the song. In Bobbie Gentry's
>version the singer is a girl, and the song includes lyrics such as
>"I saw him at the sawmill today up on Choctaw Ridge."(referring to BJ.)
> ^^^
>The song was also recorded by a male singer, Lee Hazlewood, and Billy Joe
>became Billie Jo, reversing the roles.
Well shit. No wonder you're confused. Bobbi just changed the genders
to protect the innocent. After all, who'd believe that a *guy* would
waste a perfectly good holiday kelp loaf like that?
And one more thang: The mystery's in the listener, not the song. Bobbi
was into indeterminacy rather than ambiguity.
andrew.j.whitman
>As to what they threw off the bridge, Bobbie Gentry once went on record with
>the statement that it was the mystery that made the song, and that the mystery
>would remain unsolved. Don McLean later used the same device to even greater
>success with "American Pie," which triggered a national obsession on figuring
>out the "real meaning" of the song.
Well, probably not a national obsession, but certainly the life's work
of many talented scholars. According to the latest edition of the
"American Pie Historical Interpretive Digest" (APHID), noted McLean
historian Vincent Vandeman has postulated that cheezy country
songs may have played a much more prominent role in the epic
composition than had originally been thought. In particular, the
"widowed bride," usually supposed to be either Ella Holly or
Joan Rivers, may in fact be Billie Jo. According to this radical
exegesis, the "pink carnation" of McLean's song is probably what
was thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and was later found by
the lonely, teenaged McLean as he wandered drunkenly on the levee.
Of course, such a view poses problems. McLean vehemently denies any
knowledge of Choctaw Ridge, and any theory linking the two songs
must surely address this mysterious meeting place of Billie Jo and
her husband Billy Joe. Vandeman speculates that Choctaw Ridge may
have been the place McLean drove his Chevy after drinking whiskey
and rye, and that McLean may have been unaware of the name because
of his foggy mental state. Still, there appear to be many tenuous
connections in Vandeman's interpretation - Tammy Wynette as the
girl who sang the blues, the proposed affair between Wynette and
Billie Joe which later led to d-i-v-o-r-c-e and Billy Joe's
suicide, the mysterious whereabouts of George Jones, and why
McLean insisted on driving a Chevy to the levee instead of a more
economical Japanese car.
My own view is that none of it makes much sense. Vandeman's theory
is intriguing, but it seems far more logical to hold to the traditional
interpretation of "American Pie" as an eschatological parable of
nuclear destruction and the rebirth of civilization on Alpha Centauri.
>TH
Andy Whitman
AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio
att!cblpn!ajw or
a...@cblpn.att.com
Sean....@cs.cmu.edu
``Ode to Mary Jo,'' but a number of legal reasons prevented
it from being released.
(``Chappaquidick'' has the same number of syllables as
``Tallahatchee.'' You can probably reconstruct the song
from there...)
--Sean
sean....@cs.cmu.edu school of computer science
carnegie mellon university 5000 forbes pittsburgh, pa 15213 3891
Michael Clymer
>the statement that it was the mystery that made the song, and that the mystery
>would remain unsolved.
Also, if my feeble mind remembers correctly, the point was made
that the song was about the breakdown of a family, due to non-
communications (Today we call that disfunctional). And the
mystery of what was thrown was inconseuential to the theme.