Who Jumped Off The Tallahatchie

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Songfacts®:

This song tells the story of the fictional Billie Joe McAllister, who kills himself by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge. At that place really is a Tallahatchie Bridge in Money, Mississippi, but Gentry made upwardly the story.

The Tallahatchie Bridge, which spans the Tallahatchie River, collapsed in 1972, but was later rebuilt.
In this song, a family finds out about the death of Billie Joe and shares gossip about him at the dinner table along with their other mundane concerns. Bobbie Gentry explained: "The message of the vocal revolves around the nonchalant way the family unit talks nearly the suicide. The song is a report in unconscious cruelty."

The bulletin in the vocal would get even more relevant in the digital age when social networks and other tools made it easy to comment on newsworthy events. It quickly became clear that in that location were many folks who lacked empathy for suffering that didn't straight affect them, and these people now had many forums to share their opinions.
Gentry was familiar with the Tallahatchie Bridge since she was born and raised in Mississippi, where she grew up in a dwelling without electricity. She learned to sing in church building and her family got her a piano to nurture her musical talents. At age 13, she moved with her mother to Palm Springs, California, and in the ensuing years performed locally, taking the phase name Bobbie Gentry (her nascency name: Roberta Lee Streeter - she chose the name after seeing Carmine Gentry, a 1952 movie with Jennifer Jones and Charlton Heston).

After graduating loftier school, she studied at UCLA, and during this time signed a deal with the publishing visitor Larry Shayne Music, which sent a demo tape of her vocal "Mississippi Delta" to Capitol Records, hoping one of the established artists on the characterization would record information technology. Kelly Gordon, a producer at the label, was impressed with the demo and wanted Gentry to record it herself, so he signed her to a bargain equally an artist and arranged for her to record it. Needing a flip side for the single, Gentry supplied another vocal she wrote with a Delta feel: "Ode To Billie Joe." Capitol heard more than hit potential in that song, then they released the unmarried with "Ode" every bit the A-side and "Mississippi Delta" equally the flip. Released on July 10, 1967, the song went to #1 in the US on Baronial 26, where it stayed for four weeks, becoming one of the virtually enduring hits of the era.
When Record Mirror asked Gentry in 1967 what was thrown from the bridge at the end of this vocal, she replied: "It'southward entirely a affair of interpretation equally from each individual's viewpoint. Only I've hoped to get across the basic indifference, the casualness, of people in moments of tragedy. Something terrible has happened, simply it's 'pass the black-eyed peas', or 'y'all call up to wipe your feet.'"
A picture show with the title spelled Ode to Billy Joe was released in 1976. The film was based on this song, with a fictionalized Gentry (named "Bobbie Lee Hartley") played by Glynnis O'Connor. Gentry was not in the moving-picture show, but re-recorded "Ode To Billie Joe" for the soundtrack. This turned out to be some of Gentry's concluding work high-profile piece of work, equally she disappeared from the public heart soon afterward.

The re-released version of the vocal charted at #54, and the main title from the film - too equanimous by Gentry, fabricated #65.
Along with the mystery human being in "You're And then Vain," what Billie Joe throws off the bridge before he jumps is one of the great questions in pop music. Many people speculated that information technology was a babe, which led to his suicide. In the picture, he throws over a rag doll and jumps because he thinks he might be gay.

Gentry insists that what he throws over the span isn't important, and to fixate on that is to miss the point of the vocal - that nosotros ofttimes respond to tragic events with barbarous dissociation.
Released as Gentry's beginning single, this song topped the The states chart for four weeks in 1967, knocking The Beatles "All Y'all Need Is Love" out of the meridian spot. The Ode To Billy Joe anthology would besides height the nautical chart, displacing The Beatles Sgt Pepper after its 15 week run at #1.
Gentry won the All-time New Artist Grammy the year this was released. The song also won the awards for All-time Vocal Performance, Female; Best Organisation Accompanying A Vocalist Or Instrumentalist; and Best Contemporary Female Solo Vocal Performance.
Gentry donated her handwritten lyrics to this song to the University of Mississippi, where it is housed in a collection along with works past Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner.
Jimmie Haskell'south cord arrangment on this song, which won a Grammy award, was a masterwork and a feat of innovation.

Speaking with Gary Theroux in his History of Stone 'n' Roll series, Haskell said that he was given full creative freedom with the arrangement, simply because Capitol Records wasn't going to bother giving him specific instructions for a song intended as a B-side. "Bobbie's lyrics are like a motion picture, and then I composed the string arrangement as if it were a picture," he said.

String sections at the time were typically four violins, one viola, and one cello, merely Haskell used four violins and two cellos. "I was able to use one cello to play a pizzicato bass part, and the other cello to play a traditional bowed string part," he said. "I had to think of a bass line that would not brand the cello sound phony because the usual bass line in those days was 'Doom, duh doom, duh doom, duh doom doom doom doom doom, duh doom...' I idea, What's my cello player gonna play that has the fewest notes? Well, I figured out a bass line with just iii notes every two bars. Information technology was, 'Doom, [snaps fingers iii times], duh doom [snaps fingers three times], doom. Every one time in awhile the role player might add an actress note. [producer] Kelly listened to the first rehearsal. Then he walked over to where the cello was playing (it'southward called pizzicato when you lot pluck the strings). Kelly kneeled in forepart of the cello and put his ear near the f-hole (on stringed instruments, it sounds like a dirty word only it's because it is shaped like the letter "F") and remarked, 'Keep playing.' Kelly then asked his engineer, Joe Polito, to put the mike right on the cello. And Kelly got a practiced sound. I decided I couldn't write too much, and then after the introduction there isn't much going on with the violins. Only the cello is notwithstanding playing along with Bobbie's guitar. As it turned out, all Capitol had to do was pay the string players overtime. The musicians' union somewhen didn't permit arrangers to score music for ii artists on the same date."
According to the vocal's arranger Jimmie Haskell, Gentry's original demo of this song was 7-minutes long, with at least one extra poetry. That verse appears in her handwritten lyrics - it reveals that a daughter named "Sally Jane" was left crestfallen afterwards Billie Joe jumped to his decease.
The story of how this song was recorded is rather opaque, complicated by lawsuits and by Gentry refusing interviews after she left the manufacture. The vocal is comprised of just Gentry's voice, her acoustic guitar, and a cord section. Her voice and guitar were likely recorded for her demo, which she did at a studio with a singer named Bobby Paris at the controls - she did some piece of work singing fill-in and playing guitar for Paris, and he let her use studio time in render. Capitol records used this demo version (possibly edited down), and hired the arranger Jimmie Haskell to add a string department. On May 24, 1967, he recorded the cord section at the end of a session for a group called The Checkmates, Ltd.

Where this gets gummy is the producer credit, as Gentry's phonation and guitar from her demo were used on the hit recording, and Bobby Paris could claim that he was the "producer" of those sessions, even if he was just pushing the tape push. After the song became a hit, Paris took legal action, and in 1975 was awarded $32,227 along with a share of future mechanical royalties.
Afterward in 1967, an instrumental version by The Kingpins hit #28 in the US. Ray Bryant also released a version that year that made #89.
Running 4:13, this vocal was longer than well-nigh hits of the era, and the longest #1 of 1967.
This song had an affect on the Country chart, going to #17. The post-obit year, Gentry teamed upwards with Glen Campbell to release an album of duets called Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell, which went to #1. She had a few more small hits, including "Okolona River Bottom Band" (#54), but "Ode To Billie Joe" is by far her best-known work.
When this became a striking, Rolling Stone magazine reported that it was just a twenty-pes driblet off the span and the water was deep enough so yous would not get injure. Of form, lots of people went to the bridge and jumped, which collection the local law nuts.
The Beach Boys did a reply to this song called "Ode to Betty Joe" on their album Unsurpassed Masters, Vol. xx (1968-1969), released with the song "Information technology'due south Time." The two songs are not Beach Boys recordings, simply performed by a comedy and musical group hired past the Embankment Boys called the Pickle Brothers (the support group for the Beach Boys' live performances). The 2 songs later became recorded, pressed, and presumably vended at concerts. >>

Suggestion credit:
Brandon - Seattle, WA
Rosanne Greenbacks's 2014 album The River & the Thread shows her standing on the Tallahatchie Span, which she visited on a trip to the Southward where she collected song ideas for the album. "In my mind the Tallahatchie Span was enormous, but it's just a petty pocket-sized span over this fiddling Tallahatchie River," she told us. "Nobody there. Nosotros sat on the bridge for a half an hour and one car went by."

Cash included Ode To Billie Joe in her alive set around this time.
Country singer Kathy Mattea recorded this for her 2018 anthology, Pretty Bird.