Billie Joe's Jump off Tallahatchie Bridge wasn't the point!

[MickinMD ★]

I was playing some oldies-but-goodies I haven't heard for a while and, after playing Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" (video at bottom) I wondered if it had ever been disclosed what "...she and Billie Joe was throwin'" off the Tallahatchie Bridge. If you're not old enough to remember the song coming out in 1967, it sold 750,000 records in its first week and the mystery about the bridge and what was thrown off was a sensation. The rag doll thrown off the bridge in the 1975 movie version, symbolizing the girl ending her childhood, was an invention of the movie only and not the intention of the song.

Over the years speculation has ranged from a ring to a murder victim to a baby but Bobbie Gentry herself, who escaped her impoverished Mississippi Delta childhood and moved to a better life in California when her mother remarried, and who was a conservatory-trained musician by the time she wrote and sang the fictional song, is on record as saying, "I have no idea" what they threw off the bridge, though she implied in interviews that it centered on a boy/girl relationship that went wrong. She also pointed out in an interview that most people miss the point of the song:

“The song is sort of a study in unconscious cruelty. But everybody seems more concerned with what was thrown off the bridge than they are with the thoughtlessness of the people expressed in the song. What was thrown off the bridge really isn’t that important.
“Everybody has a different guess about what was thrown off the bridge—flowers, a ring, even a baby. Anyone who hears the song can think what they want, but the real message of the song, if there must be a message, revolves around the nonchalant way the family talks about the suicide. They sit there eating their peas and apple pie and talking, without even realizing that Billie Joe’s girlfriend is sitting at the table, a member of the family.”
Source: http://performingsongwriter.com/bobbie-gentry-ode-billie-joe/

The interesting first page of her written originally manuscript, which implies the narrator in the song is a "Sally Jane Ellison" and her boyfriend’s name was originally spelled “Billy Jo” has been released by the University of Mississippi and here it is.  The original recording was 7 minutes long and was shortened to 4 minutes and the original 1st verse was dropped and the other verses shortened, dropped, or otherwise edited:



A couple interesting sites:
https://www.quora.com/What-actually-happened-in-%E2%80%9COde-to-Billie-Joe%E2%80%9D
https://tv.avclub.com/why-did-billie-joe-mcallister-jump-off-the-tallahatchie-1798283223

 

[Ralphie ★]

Now this is the kind of in-depth deeply analytical posts we need more of, you slackers!

[Tizeye]

1 hour ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

Now this is the kind of in-depth deeply analytical posts we need more of, you slackers!

Stay tuned for "Who's buried in Grant's tomb". The burning question everyone asks, revealed!

[donkpow]

Interesting. Now if I could know what it means, "25 or 6 to 4", I would be relieved.

[Longjohn ★]

I never did like that song. The radio stations played the crap out of it the year I graduated HS. I was glad I had a push button radio in my car to quickly change the station.

Does anyone else remember the car radios without the push buttons? Technology is a good thing. Didn’t have to listen to that stupid song. (No I didn’t listen to the link)

[AirwickWithCheese]

3 hours ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

Now this is the kind of in-depth deeply analytical posts we need more of, you slackers!

 

 

[donkpow]

Billy Joe was actually Billie Jack's younger brother. When Billie Jack went off to 'nam, Billie Joe started getting into trouble. Messing around with an handful of young women and smoking a lot of reefer.

[petitepedal ★]

Thanks Mick...that was interesting..

[TrentonMakes]

"Ode To Billie Joe" stops me in my tracks every time I hear it.  The lyrics, her voice and the arrangement are all perfect - it's a masterpiece.  Thanks for sharing the analysis.

[Road Runner]

I always thought it was a baby.  

[donkpow]

I always thought it was a bible.

 

[jsharr ★]

Is there really a basement at the Alamo, and if so, was PeeWee's bike ever stored there?

[donkpow]

As you probably already know, Bobby McGee used to drive all the women crazy. You know, he'd love 'em and leave 'em. A lot of good women were ruined by Bobby McGee.

 

[TrentonMakes]

3 hours ago, donkpow said:

Interesting. Now if I could know what it means, "25 or 6 to 4", I would be relieved.

We have covered this.  The story isn't anywhere near as interesting.

[Road Runner]

So WTH is the meaning of "A Horse With No Name"?  That bothers me a lot more than what those stupid teenagers threw off a bridge. 

[jsharr ★]

Also, how can one person be both the eggman and the walrus?

[Page Turner]

6 hours ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:

Now this is the kind of in-depth deeply analytical posts we need more of, you slackers!

...big hair, writes her own material, and fills out a bikini nicely.    #bestillmyheart

...

[Page Turner]

52 minutes ago, jsharr said:

Also, how can one person be both the eggman and the walrus?

...I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.  This is not difficult, man.

[jsharr ★]

3 minutes ago, Page Turner said:

...I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.  This is not difficult, man.

 

[Square Wheels]

I read this as Billy Joel jumped off a bridge, and wondered why that would be news.

[donkpow]

10 minutes ago, Square Wheels said:

I read this as Billy Joel jumped off a bridge, and wondered why that would be news.

I have heard Billy Joel is aware of this situation. I don't know if Talahatchi has cab service out to the bridge?

 

[TrentonMakes]

9 hours ago, MickinMD said:

“The song is sort of a study in unconscious cruelty. But everybody seems more concerned with what was thrown off the bridge than they are with the thoughtlessness of the people expressed in the song. What was thrown off the bridge really isn’t that important."

I was thinking about these sentences.  And I wonder whether she intended to primarily highlight that thoughtlessness in the song, and if she is therefore annoyed with all the people who fixate on the mystery of what was thrown?  Maybe she just needed more sentences that ended with "Tallahatchie Bridge" and the line about something being thrown was just chosen as something that fit.  Still, it's hard to imagine she wrote that line without an idea of what they were throwing.

I have a memory of discussing this song in a school music class, and the teacher mentioning the mystery of what they were throwing.  I don't recall if the passivity of the girl's family was also mentioned.

The additional verse is also a treat - interesting that chronologically it's at the end of the story, but she intended for it to serve as a foreboding introduction.  Nevertheless I think I agree with the exclusion of this explanatory verse, because now you have to listen as pieces of the story fall into place.  Of course once you really love a song it's hard to think of it any other way.

 

also - Wednesday was Billy Joel's 69th birthday.  I bet his wish is to someday write a song as good as "Ode".  

[12string]

wait - there was ACID at Woodstock?!

[Ralphie ★]

5 hours ago, 12string said:

wait - there was ACID at Woodstock?!

And there was licorice at Waynestock.

 

 

[JerrySTL ★]

13 hours ago, donkpow said:

Interesting. Now if I could know what it means, "25 or 6 to 4", I would be relieved.

It was around 3:35 or 3:346 AM.

[MickinMD ★]

On 5/11/2018 at 6:45 AM, donkpow said:

Interesting. Now if I could know what it means, "25 or 6 to 4", I would be relieved.

I was a big fan of Chicago and, during grad school at IIT in Chicago in the '70's, I used to think of that song when I was up half the night doing 600-course level Thermodynamics, etc. homework.

[donkpow]

39 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

I was a big fan of Chicago and, during grad school at IIT in Chicago in the '70's, I used to think of that song when I was up half the night doing 600-course level Thermodynamics, etc. homework.

What a coincidence, I was up half the night during most of the 70's myself. Of course, "therma...", "thermo...", "theradyn...".    I had a different major. ?