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Musical accompaniment: Ode to Billie Joe by Bobbie Gentry
I love today’s song! Ode to Billie Joe lets us listen in on a conversation around a Mississippi family’s dinner table as they discuss some news about young Billie Joe McAllister. It’s a peculiar song and people have been arguing about what it means for nearly 50 years! I’d love to hear your thoughts. I read somewhere that Billie Joe Armstrong, the lead singer of Green Day, was named after this song. When the singer/songwriter Bobbie Gentry was asked about the meaning, she would only say, “I don’t know.” Wise woman!
This picture is by Frank Eugene and titled Dolly Varden. I have to assume that was the subject’s name, but when I looked her up I found Dolly Varden can also refer to a particular trout (salvelinus malma), native to cold-water regions of the Pacific Ocean and to a type of women’s fashion from the 1870s, inspired by a Charles Dickens character in Barnaby Rudge. Reminiscent of today’s song, Dolly Varden looks like a girl with a secret.
Archive.org
who knows but I bet it had something to do with whatever he and the singer threw off the tallahatchie bridge.
This song has layers! The family thinks it’s a shame Billie Joe jumped off the bridge but quickly moves on to how the dad is going to have to plow extra acres now, and who is coming to dinner on Sunday. Except the singer! She’s in shock and can’t eat or talk. It seems like Billie Joe was her boyfriend. What did they throw off the bridge?
Bobbie Gentry herself stated that the object thrown was not the main focus of the song. She emphasized that the real message revolves around the indifference of the family to Billie Joe’s suicide, rather than the object itself. Gentry described it as a “study in unconscious cruelty.”
She’s right about that, but people are fascinated by what made him jump!
Billie Joe will remain a puzzle in perpetuity.
You deserve a Pulitzer for your prose and succinct one-line review!