Posted on 06/03/2016 2:22:48 PM PDT by PROCON
Music fans know the importance of Friday.
"It was the 3rd of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day."
That is the opening line of one of music's most discussed, examined and appreciated songs — "Ode to Billie Joe," written and performed by Bobbie Gentry, who was born in Mississippi's Chickasaw County. When her parents divorced and her mother left for California, Gentry moved in with her grandparents in Leflore County, near Greenwood.
"Ode to Billie Joe" was selected by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the top 500 songs of all time. It went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and cracked the Top 10 on the Easy Listening and R&B charts. Billboard also rated it the No. 3 song of 1967.
She was only 22 when she recorded it. The tune earned Gentry three Grammy Awards — Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female; Best Solo Vocal Performance, Female; Best New Artist.
And here is one of those strange-but-true facts: "Ode to Billie Joe" was the B-side of Gentry's first single. The A-side, which Gentry's team at Capitol Records believed had the best chance of becoming a hit, was "Mississippi Delta," a gritty, hard-driving song that was a complete opposite of "Ode to Billie Joe."
(Excerpt) Read more at sunherald.com ...
A classic Internet troll post, for sure.
This is also the day Neil Diamond lost his virginity.
“Desiree”
“It was the third of June,
On that summer’s day
When I became a man
At the hands of a girl almost twice my age.”
Ode To Billy Joe is a wonderful song. I read a book once based on the song, which was a disappointment and dimmed my liking for the song. But the more I forget the book, the better the song sounds.
“And why did he jump to his death off that bridge?”
Someone who claimed to know stated there was a lover’s spat, she took the engagement ring off, threw it in the river, and he jumped in to retrieve it.
www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/michael_martin_murphey/wildfire.html
She comes down from Yellow Mountain On a dark flat land she rides. On a pony she named Wildfire With a whirlwind by her side. On a cold Nebraska night.
Very mystic...
You mean, the baby wasn’t somethin’ what they was throwin’ off the Tallahatchie bridge?
The movie was kinda stupid if I recall.
Incredible lyrics.
Wildfire is another one of those great songs.
Every once in a while, I am in the mood to listen to tragic songs. Ode To Billy Joel, Wildfire, Honey (Bobby Goldsboro), Yesterday When I Was Young (several artists) and many other songs of that era.
Disagree. She was great in many genres and she could pluck decently too. She could write, she could sing and was ez on the eyes.
I like the song for its depiction of life in rural northwestern Mississippi—the farm economy, the customs, the religion (the preacher, Brother Taylor is probably Southern Baptist), and the cuisine—blackeyed peas, biscuits, apple pie served during “dinner,” which is the noontime meal, as it is in Oklahoma.
“Today, computer databases clearly show that perhaps the nation’s most reclusive pop star lives in an 8,000-square-foot house with a great pool not all that far from the old homestead. Real estate agents confirmed it. “
Not sure about her but Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
“Your juvenile provocation schtick so predictable, Mick.”
Trying to insult by using an anti-Irish slur?
Pretty sad.
No, in the song, they threw her baby off the bridge.
Then Billie Joe committed suicide out of guilt.
I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Boston when her hit came out.Country music and the South might as well have been on another planet to me.But that song has always been beyond spooky to me.
Don’t give a hoot about the song or what they was throwing off the bridge, but pass the biscuits, please.
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