I take my poetry wherever I find it, and while I may not often find it in popular song, I do feel that this ballad by the American singer-songwriter Bobby Gentry, first released in 1967, with its claustrophobic atmosphere and slow oblique build of narrative tension, is a masterpiece of storytelling quite worthy to stand beside the great mediaeval ballads of illicit love and infanticide such as ‘Mary Hamilton’ and ‘Down By The Greenwood Side’.

For those unfamiliar with the song, it is the story of a young girl living in the Mississipi Delta in the southern U.S. who hears that her childhood friend Billy Joe has committed suicide by jumping of the Tallahatchie Bridge. Slowly we realise that she and Billy Joe have been lovers, that some social gap has made an open relationship impossible, that nonetheless she has become pregnant by Billy Joe, that she has delivered, or perhaps aborted, the child in secret, and that she and Billy Joe have together disposed of it by throwing it off that same bridge, leaving Billy Joe a guilt that he cannot live with. All this is conveyed very skilfully by hints and conversational exchanges, with nothing being made explicit.

I must at this point emphasise that this is my personal interpretation of the song, though I believe one shared by many other listeners. Bobby Gentry herself has consistently refused to give any clarification of the lyrics, especially in the matter of what was thrown off the bridge. She gives as her reason a wish for people to focus instead on the indifference of the supporting characters, the cultural lack of empathy, but I wonder if there is also an element of wanting to preserve the mystery, and also, maybe, of not wanting to commit to what seems to me by far the most compelling interpretation of the narrative on the grounds that it might be rather strong meat for a modern American audience.

Ode To Billy Joe

Was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin’ cotton and my brother was balin’ hay
And at dinnertime 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 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

Mama said to me, Child, what’s happened to your appetite?
I’ve been cookin’ all mornin’ 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 and gone since we heard the news ’bout Billie Joe
And brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus goin’ ’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

Bobby Gentry