Ode to Billy Joe

Former Member

This has bugged me for years. What did Billy Joe throw off the Tallahatchie bridge? For people that don't know, this is a sixties song by Bobbie Gentry (linked and lyrics below), which was was remade a dozen times and made into a film(that I never saw).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZt5Q-u4crc
e/ I also put this on the site spotify playlist

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 Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas
"Well, Billy 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 Billy Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billy 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 Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

A year has come 'n' gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy 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

Now, to my mind, Billy Joe had a romance with the narrator, they had a baby out of wedlock and didn't want people to know so threw if off the bridge, Billy Joe felt so guilty he went after it.

Wiki tells me that in the film Billy Joe is gay, and can't cope with the deep south 50's prejudices. They throw her rag-doll off the bridge.

Now, someone here must have heard this song before, and if you haven't, go listen!! I'd really love to hear other people's opinions about this song.

Former Member

aw, come on! someone must have heard it!

Former Member

I assume the film's right, but if it's any consolation your version's better

I would have said though Billy Joe was what used to be call simple and asked the narrator, a popular and pretty girl to marry him, and she haughtily rejected him and threw the ring in the river. He was so distraught he committed suicide. And the narrator is now consumed by guilt, worsened by the death of her father and her Mother sinking into depression, unable to cope

Former Member

love it! it ties in with the the hints of the mother wanting her to be with the preacher.
apparently my ma says there was also a made for tv version with the baby thing. I think either way the mother was more clued up than she was letting on