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What did Billie Joe throw of the bridge? Bobbie Gentry - Ode to Billie Joe
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 walked back to the house to eat And Mama hollered out the back door "Y'all remember to wipe your feet" And then she said "I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge" "Today Billie Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge" And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas "Well, Billie 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" And Mama said it was shame about Billie Joe, anyhow Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge And now Billie Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge And Brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie 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 Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge" And 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 Billie Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge" A year has come 'n' gone since we heard the news 'bout Billie Joe And 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 besides where the singer of this strange song has gone...this is another great mystery surrounding Bobbie Gentry...People have been debating this question for two decades: what did they throw of the bridge? The two most common answers are 1) a baby: But Bobbie suposedly denied it was a baby 2) a wedding ring: but that doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the lyrics...so what did they throw of that caused Billie Joe to jump after it years later, killing himself? I guess she really was the mystery queen... It was not in vain...it was in Minneapolis! | |
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Mystery aside, the song is timeless! | |
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from rollingstone.com
Written by: Gentry Produced by: Kelly Gordon, Bobby Paris Released: July '67 on Capitol Charts: 14 weeks Top spot: No. 1 Once and for all: exactly what did Billie Joe throw off the Tallahatchee Bridge, and why did he jump himself? Gentry never revealed the secret of this spooky country blues. "The real message," she said, "revolves around the way the nonchalant family talks about the suicide." | |
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It was a story of repressed family drama -- of hidden heartbreak and coded meanings exchanged over biscuits and blackeyed peas. But most of all, Ode To Billie Joe was a sultry Southern mystery whose unanswered questions were a national obsession at the moment of your birth. What did Billie Joe McAlister and the song's protagonist throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge? What made Billie Joe throw himself off the bridge just a few days later?
According to a 1978 Robbie Benson television movie, the answers were (1) a rag doll; and (2) a simmering sexual-identity crisis of which said rag doll was somehow richly symbolic. That Bobbie Gentry herself co-wrote the script for this movie does little to satisfy skeptics, especially those still troubled by the role of the "nice young preacher" Brother Taylor. For them, the omigod-I'm-a-gay-man-in-a-redneck-world explanation for the events up on Choctaw Ridge has all the credibility that the magic-bullet theory does for Oliver Stone.  [Edited 4/27/05 2:52am] | |
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I always thought it was a baby.  | |
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