The Mystery of Ode to Billy Joe

In 1967 country singer Bobbie Gentry released a single entitled Ode to Billy Joe. The song's breezy bluegrass tune and memorable chorus made it an instant hit, and today it remains one of the most popular country songs of all time.

The song has remained popular for another reason, however. The lyrics of Billy Joe are haunting and mysterious, and recount an odd Southern gothic tale of a young man's tragic suicide. The story is noticeably incomplete however, and the listener is left with many unanswered questions.

This page is an attempt to summarize the controversy.

Lyrics

The following are the complete lyrics to Ode to Billy Joe. The song is approximately three minutes long. There does not appear to be any truth to the rumors that the song was originally longer but was trimmed for length, and thus that vital lyrics were "cut."

Also note that the spelling "Billie Joe" is often substituted for "Billy Joe," with the former spelling actually being used on the albulm cover.

It was the third of June,
another sleepy, dusty Delta day.
I was out choppin' cotton
and my brother was balin' hay.
And at dinner time we stopped,
and we walked back to the house to eat.
And mama hollered at the back door
"y'all remember to wipe your feet."
And then she said she got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge
Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

Papa said to mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas,
"Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense,
pass the biscuits, please."
"There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow."
Mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow.
Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge,
And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

And brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billy Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show.
And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night?
"I'll have another piece of apple pie, you know it don't seem right.
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge,
And now you tell me Billy Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge."

Mama said to me "Child, what's happened to your appetite?
I've been cookin' all morning and you haven't touched a single bite.
That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today,
Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday. Oh, by the way,
He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge
And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge."

A year has come 'n' gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe.
Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo.
There was a virus going 'round, papa caught it and he died last spring,
And now mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything.
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge,
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

Annotations

Facts we can divulge from the song:

1) The story takes place in Mississippi. Choctaw Ridge, Carroll County, Tupelo, and the Tallahatchie Bridge all exist in real life. The opening line suggests the speaker lives in the Delta religion of the state, which is located in nothern Mississippi.

2) the speaker's father does not care much for Billy Joe, her mother is more sympathetic, and her brother was apparently a friend of his at one time.

3) the speaker apparently had some degree of sympathetic relationship with Billy Joe. She was talking to him at church and was seen with him on the bridge. When she finds out he is dead she loses her appetite (unlike the rest of the family) and later spends "a lot of time" throwing flowers off the bridge in what is clearly some sort of memorial tribute.

4) the family of the speaker is largely oblivious to the relationship she had with Billy Joe, and for some reason she has no interest in bringing it up.

Unresolved questions from the song:

1) What did the speaker and Billy Joe throw off the bridge, and at what time did this event occur? The fact that Brother Taylor visited the speaker's house on the same day Billy Joe died does not necessarily mean he saw the girl and Billy Joe throwing the thing off the bridge on this day as well.

2) What degree of relationship did the speaker and Billy Joe have? Was it sexual? Ages are not given, but it is suggested that the speaker is at the very least a teenager. She lives with her parents, but is capable of doing hard labor in the field. Her brother is old enough to get married and move out of the house. The brother recalls putting a frog down his sister's dress- a rather immature stunt- but this likely happened years ago and is being remembered out of nostalgia.

3) The key question- why did Billy Joe commit suicide, and to what degree was this related to:
-his relationship with the speaker
-talking to the speaker at church the Sunday prior
-he and the speaker throwing something off the bridge
-visiting the sawmill the day before

Themes

Regardless of the unanswered questions of the song's plot, the song nevertheless contains several themes. The first is simply that of a "period piece" of Southern life in the early 20th Century.

The other theme is a darker one, about the indifference we often show towards the loss of human life. The speaker's family talks about a young man's suicide in the most nonchalant way possible. The line "Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense/ pass the biscuits, please" is a great example. Aside from the speaker, no one seems to know or care much about Billy Joe. His death is just a source of dinnertime gossip, like the weather.

Theories

1) The most common theory is that Billy Joe and the speaker were indeed involved in some degree of romantic / sexual relationship that was kept hidden from the speaker's family because the father strongly disliked Billy Joe. This in turn is commonly interpreted as meaning the couple had an unplanned child at some point, and they threw the baby off the bridge together rather than deal with this manifestation of their illicit relationship. The guilt stemming from the murder of his own child later in turn caused Billy Joe to kill himself.

Some have gone even further and speculated that because the child was unwanted, it was either stillborn or aborted in some haphazard fashion, and then quietly "disposed" of off the bridge to hide the proof that the pregnancy had ever occurred. I've heard some point to the relevance of the "Child, what's happened to your appetite" line as a subtle key to this. Loss of appetite commonly occurs after giving birth. But it also commonly occurs when someone is depressed.

2) Another theory is that Billy Joe and the speaker are different races. This is consistent with the song's Southern theme and may explain the speaker's motivation for keeping her relationship with Billy Joe hidden. The food being eaten at dinner may be intended to represent traditional black Southern cuisine, and the mother's use of the word "child" to address her daughter is a rather distinctly African-American expression. The speaker similarly mentions picking cotton, which is likewise a chore that has been primarily associated with Southern blacks since the days of slavery. An inter-racial relationship during the period in which the song is set would clearly be a social taboo, and may have led the speaker to break up with Billy Joe, who proceeded to commit suicide. The unwanted child theory can be similarly strengthened by this premise, as a mixed-race baby would be even more socially unacceptable than an mixed race romance.

3) A third theory says that Billy Joe's suicidal tendencies were well-known to the speaker. The thing thrown off the bridge was thus a gun, after she successfully convinced Billy Joe not to kill himself. But then later he jumped off the bridge anyway, proving the failure of her efforts.

Is there a "correct" answer?

It depends. There are two "official" sources you can cite.

1) According to the 1975 movie

In 1976 Warner Bros. made a movie inspired by the song, entitled simply Ode to Billy Joe. It starred Robby Benson as Billy Joe McAllister and Glynnis O'Connor as the speaker, who was given the name "Bobbie Lee Hartley."
The film's tagline was "What the song didn't tell you, the movie will" and thus purported to provide an authoritative conclusion to the mystery.

The movie has been criticized for taking too many artisitc liberties and introducing too much new information that is not even hinted at in the song. Wikipedia provides the following plot summary:

Set in the early 1950s, the film explores the budding relationship between budding relationship between Bobbie Lee Hartley [the song's narrator character] and Billy Joe McAllister.

Hartley and McAllister struggle to form a relationship despite resistence from Hartley's family, who contend she is too young to date. They develop the relationship, despite the odds in their way. One night at a party, however, McAllister gets drunk. In his inebriated state, he makes love to another man dressed in drag, though later he reveals he knew what he was doing. He bids an enigmatical goodbye to Hartley. Overcome with guilt, McAllister subsequently kills himself by jumping off the bridge spanning the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi.

[...]

The object thrown from the bridge is the narrator's ragdoll; throughout the book and film she voices her concerns that she will always remain a child. The ragdoll being thrown from the bridge marks the point at which she begins moving towards adulthood.

The reference to the "book" refers to the 1976 movie novelization.

2) According to Bobby Gentry

Bobby Gentry has historically remained coy about the meaning of her song. According to her, the main theme of Billy Joe was simply death and dying, and the ways in which we can be indifferent and oblivious to the suffering of others.

In a 2002 interview with the Florida-based TCPalm.com website, Herman Raucher, the screenplay writer of the Billy Joe film, recalls his encounter with Gentry as he tried to figure out the song's meaning:

INTERVIEWER: [You wrote] the screenplay for the Deep South, song-inspired film Ode to Billy Joe. How did that come about?
RAUCHER: There’s an actor and writer and producer and director named Max Baer, whose father was the world [heavyweight boxing] champion. And Max called me because Summer of ‘42 just knocked him out, and he said, I’ve got the rights to Ode to Billy Joe. Now, you have to understand that Ode to Billy Joe was, at that time, the largest selling record in musical history.
I said, ‘Max, what the hell do I know about Ode to Billy Joe?’
He says, ‘I want you to come out here and meet with Bobbie Gentry - I’ll pay your way out here.’
I said, OK. ... Max and I go to meet her, and I ask her what does the song mean?
She said, ‘I made it up. I don’t know what it means.’
I said, ‘You don’t know why he jumped off the bridge?’
She said, ‘I have no idea.’

He proceeds to explain that since the song apparently lacked a "true" meaning, he simply made up his own storyline to explain the lyrics.

Bobbie Gentry is still alive, but has largely fallen from the public radar screen. She has never published an autobiography, so today it is difficult to determine if she has ever made any more authoritative statements on the meaning of "Billy Joe." There is no reason to deny Raucher's story. Many musicians, notably John Lennon and the Beatles, have frequently made similar statements indicating that their songs' lyrics don't have a firm meaning and it is instead up for the listener to determine their significance.

It does seem a bit odd to me that Herman Raucher would travel all the way to meet Gentry in person just so she could tell him the song has no meaning. Couldn't a simple phone call have sufficed?

Spin-offs and parodies

French reader Philippe tells me that a french blues singer, named Eddy Mitchell, wrotte and sang a French version of "Billy Joe" entitled La Marie-Jeanne, that became a hit in its own right. "Except for some minor changes like using 'grapes' instead of "cotton" and some others to make it "Frenchier", Eddy kept the general feeling of the song the best he could," Philipe writes.

Bob Dylan- Basement Tapes (1975)

Bob Dylan is said to have hated Ode to Billy Joe. His song Clothesline Saga (track nine of the Basement Tapes album) was clearly an attempt to create a sarcastic parody of Gentry's original song. Clothesline is a largely nonsensical, go-nowhere song that tells the story of a kid who is helping his parents hang up the clothes to dry. Along the way, he and his parents have dull back-and-forth conversations. Here's an excerpt:

The dogs were barking, a neighbor passed,
Mama, of course, she said, "Hi!"
"Have you heard the news?" he said, with a grin,
"The Vice-President's gone mad!"
"Where?" "Downtown." "When?" "Last night."
"Hmm, say, that's too bad!"

The song closely mimics much of the style of Ode to Billy Joe, and features many similar expressions and phrases. Unlike Billy Joe however, the lyrics of Clothesline contain no deeper meaning or mystery, and are instead excruciatingly mundane. One gets the impression Dylan regards the Billy Joe song as enormously over-rated.

Austin Lounge Lizards- Small Minds (1995)

The Austin Lounge Lizards are a Texas-based country / bluegrass band who sing largely humorous, satirical songs. Track one on the Small Minds album is called Shallow End of the Gene Pool. The song tells the story of a guy who is mentally and socially inept in every conceivable way. At the end he decides to explore genetic engineering as a way to "fix" himself. The final line in the song is "And that's why Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge," sung in the exact same manner as the Bobby Gentry song. This line makes no sense within the context of the song, and appears to have only been included as a sort of nonsensical piece of musical filler. The two songs have sort of similar tempos, which makes the line "fit" musically.

Comments or additions? Email J.J. at jjmccullough@gmail.com

LETTERS

Thanks for some great analyses. Let me add a few additional thoughts.

Your analyses doesn't seem to address the reference to... that nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, who'd be pleased to come by for dinner next Sunday....or to the significance of Chotaw Ridge.

I'd suggest that Chotaw Ridge is the "wrong side of the tracks" from where nothing good ever seems to come, even according to the more sympathetic Mama. That's where Billy Joe lived, and that's where word of his death comes from.

Although the narrator has had a fling with Billy Joe, the fun-loving, childhood friend that she always had a crush on, she feels familial and social pressure to drop the relationship with Billy Joe, in favor of someone of better breeding or social position...like the nice young Preacher.

Unfortunately, she is pregnant with Billy Joe's child, which would, of course doom her prospects. So she talks Billy Joe into helping her get rid of the fetus by tossing it off the bridge, and then she rejects Billy Joe so she can pursue more desirable, upscale marriage prospects.

Billy Joe is heart-broken and commits suicide.

Upon the realization of where the road that her "deal with the devil" has taken her, the narrator is heartsick and cannot go through with her plans to pursue the nice young preacher, or any other substitute.

As in all good morality tales, her father (who should have paid attention to what was happening to his daughter rather than simply bad-mouthing those folks up on Chotaw Ridge and concentrating on his farming) dies, the mother who pushed her daughter inappropriately is plunged into lonely depression and the narrator is left in purgatory to contemplate her sins for the rest of her days.

I'd attach no significance to the fact that Bobby Gentry, the author, claims she doesn't really know what the song means. She either
(1) bought the rights to the song and is passing it off as her own, or
(2) is cynically trying to keep the mystery going, since it lends more interest to the song's popularity, or
(3) Thinks the meaning is so obvious that if you don't get it, she isn't going to tell you.

Note that when Paul Simon was asked in a television interview what he meant when he wrote "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?" in the song "Mrs. Robinson" (part of the sound track fin the 1967 film The Graduate), Simon insisted that it meant nothing and that he had just put it in as a lark "because it fit". Yeh, Right. The significance of the lyric should be fairly obvious to anyone of even moderate literary sensibilities, but Simon is not about to appear on public television lecturing about the inner meaning of his song, when he's desperately trying to appear cool (rather than geeky and professorial) to the mainstream audience that buys his music.

If any of this is helpful, please feel free to add it to your web site.

—Harry

* * *

Notes on Ode To Billie Jo:

The frog down the back at the picture show had to have been later than the early 1930s as movies were not common in rural southern areas until that time and later.

The talking after church bothers me.... It sounds to me like they are talking in the churchyard. In the rural south whites and blacks did not attend the same churches.

Her brother gets married and they buy a store in Tupelo...this totally negates the share cropper idea, as they could not possibly afford such an extravagant
lifestyle as sharecroppers. Even if they owned the farm....which by the way wasn't all that small as the father had 40 more acres to plow, they were not too well off.

I am inclined to think (as a poet myself) that the whole thing is contrived out of bits of personal history of the writer, southern memories, and put together in a rhyming mode to make a whole. Thus the song is allegorical rather than truthful.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak on the meaning of the song.

—Brad

* * *

Just read your page on this almost-anniversary of the tragic Tallahatchie Bridge incident.

It seems to me, all the questions about the "plot" miss the point. Thus the inventions - book, movie, discussions, - are terribly unsatisfying.

As you point out, the family is oblivious and incurious of the girl's grief. The girl herself does not enlighten us. You use the word "nonchalant" and it is close, but it does not quite capture it. In fact, it misleads.

Directly parallelling the death of Billy Joe is the death of Papa, told in the same "nonchalent" tone. Papa's death is not even mentioned until after the news of Brother and his new wife buying a store in Tupelo. Mama suffers deep, silent, inexpressible grief, and she doesn't wanna do much of anything. She is lost to the family and to life, it seems.

The girl is also in deep, inexpressible grief, the sort of grief we hear in old English folk songs. For example,

... At the age of sixteen, he was a married man
And at the age of seventeen he was a father to a son,
And at the age of eighteen the grass grew over him,
Cruel death soon put an end to his growing.
Growing, growing,
Cruel death soon put an end to his growing.

And now my love is dead and in his grave doth lie,
The green grass grows o'er him so very, very high.
I'll sit and I'll mourn his fate until the day I die,
And I'll watch o'er his child while he's growing.
Growing, growing,
And I'll watch o'er his child while he's growing.

The details are not the story in this case. The story is in the telling. We don't know the brother's name and it is not important. We don't know the something thrown off the Bridge, and it is not important. We didn't know Mama loved Papa so much that her happiness would be drawn into the grave with him, but we learn it is true, at least for this short while.

Implacably, a year has come and gone since we heard the news about Billy Joe. And it seems life goes on, unstopable and uncaring, with Brother and his wife moving away and starting their own lives, leaving Mama to her grieving.

But one cares about Billy Joe, though her love and her grief are not uttered in the song. And it seems in that eliptical little ballad, much of America understood that grief, as the hearers of much older folk songs understood the grief in the songs of their times.

Perhaps the repeating motif in the story helps: As the conversation over dinner is oblivious to Billy Joe's tragedy, so life trundles past the death of Papa, oblivious, and so flows the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge, oblivious to lovers and flowers.

The deepest grief is silent. Billy Joe touched that grief in many people, touched it without disturbing its silence.

—Mark

***

I find the theories as to the meaning of Ode To Billy Joe somewhat far fetched. I found my self having to listen closely to the song for the first time for something I'm working on, and I came away with a far simpler explanation.

Clearly, the narrator is forbidden to see Billy Joe, which is why she cannot even speak of it to her family. They cannot even imagine that she would do such a thing, which is why the report that Brother Taylor saw "a girl that looked a lot like you" does not seem to lead anyone in the family to believe that it was, in fact, her.

The line about throwing something off the Tallahatchie Bridge does not have to refer to a single object. And, given that, the last verse solves that part of the mystery.

So here is my take on the song. The "wrong side of the tracks" idea is very much to the point. Race need not enter into it. The narrator and Billy Joe meet and fall in love, even knowing that it is forbidden. She can only meet with him when she can get away from her chores, and sneak away. They meet at the bridge, which divides the good and bad parts of town. There they spend what precious time they have throwing flowers into the water, and making wishes for a future together that they know they can never have. Finally, Billy Joe can't take it any more. Because of the circumstances, the narrator only learns of his suicide from the conversation at the dinner table.

Incidentally, Shallow End of the Gene Pool was written and originally recorded by Emily Kaitz, without the last line referring to the Tallahatchie Bridge. You can find my post of the original version on the blog Star Maker Machine at http://sixsongs.blogspot.com/2009/04/april-fools-shallow-end-of-gene-pool.html

—Darius Rips