Posted on 06/03/2024 5:44:21 AM PDT by FLNittany
Perfect song. Perfect performer.
Yet no one sees her or hears from her. Good for her if that's the way she wants it.
Former owner of the Phoenix Suns? And what the heck were they throwing off the bridge?
Most think it was a still born baby. But like with many great songs, it’s up to the listener to decide.
She always said the song was simply a study on unconscious cruelty.
The movie spelled it out.
The movie went off on its own tangent. It didn’t spell out anything.
Believe it or not, I was actually the last person to cross that Tallahatchie bridge before it collapsed. I grew up not far from there.
a doll. There is a book. I read it. Not the best book in the world. But Billy Joe, and she were in love. One night he got drunk and ended up with an older guy. He felt so ashamed he threw himself off a bridge. There is also a movie as well. After Billy Joe died. The girl in the story leaves town for 6 months. Because many people thought Billy Joe killed himself because he got a girl pregnant. And she thought that was a more honorable reason than what really happened. So she let the little town believe she was the one who got knocked up. That part of Mississippi is pretty back water. A great place to drive through. But keep your windows rolled up.
A bit of trivia, she was married to Jim Stafford for a period
Some of her content definitely was pushing the boundaries of what was allowed in country music radio in the late 1960s.
She can’t match the power of Reba’s voice in her version of “Fancy” but I find Bobby’s softness gives her rendition an element of vulnerability. It’s the same quality that makes her character in “Louisiana Man” (one of my favorites of hers) seem child-like and takes you back to the time in your own childhood when the world seemed impossibly big and even the simplest things seemed special.
She pulled a Howard Hughes and walked away from music while she still was relatively popular and became a hermit. The tabloids say she’s only been seen in public once in the 40+ years since she retired, but I expect that’s an oversimplification. It’s not that she hasn’t been seen, it’s just that she keeps a low profile and doesn’t get recognized.
*The movie went off on its own tangent.*
So did Bobby Gentry. Married the Harrah’s hotel fella. She’s 23 he’s 66.
*It didn’t spell out anything.*
Robbie Benson took it up the butt.
The movie was not what the song was about.
Gentry said it was about the way the family reacted to the suicide of Billy Jo.
Why he jumped is a mystery.
Movies can and do make up the story the producers and writers WANT to tell.
I’ve crossed 2 Tallahatchie bridges in my trucking career. Both in the delta flats. Easy to remember doing so because of the song. And like the one in the photo, they didn’t seem to be high enough for a jump into the water to be dangerous. Unless you belly flopped, or dove head first into shallow water. Mud can break a neck.
I think it was spring of 1975, a teen from my old neighborhood did that off an old country bridge over Edwards River in Mercer county, IL. Looked just like the one in the picture, but not as long. It was a back roads high school grad party, with plenty of booze no doubt. He ended up in a wheelchair the rest of his life.
Love when this is posted, nearly every year!
I’ve always believed it was an aborted baby. Couldn’t say that in the song, because it would have been too repulsive to many music fans of the time.
Didn’t she prove to be a lib, and abortion supporter?
She was 72 in that pic (2014?) ... she’s now 82?
The photo reminds me of how makeup became so so heavily used by women in the 60s and after.
I remember (about 1964, I would have been 10) a 40ish woman, who was a local farmer’s daughter (who married a city guy) that would visit our church with her parents. She had grown up at that church. I was shocked at the amount of paint on her face. She didn’t look real.
Nowadays people think nothing of it. Many women are afraid to be seen without it. That really unfortunate.
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