Breaking News from the Delta - June 3rd

The third of June in any year | Just me

[re_nortex]

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"
'n' 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"
'n' 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
'n' 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-a apple pie, you know it don't seem right"
"I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge"
"And now ya tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"
'n' 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
'n' 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

[re_nortex]

Bobbie Gentry - Ode To Billie Joe

[cherry]

fabulous song....and American original....

[windcliff]

Thanks for the memories. Song got a lot of airplay,

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

Robby Benton played billyjoe in the movie.IIRC.Loved this song.

[Beowulf9]

I so enjoyed this being posted last year. Don’t know if it was you that did but it really went to me. Was actually just thinking of it yesterday, unaware of the exact day or what month even, lol, I do not know the lyrics that well.

Nice to hear this haunting song again. Really makes a summer memory.

[tumblindice]

Delta Dawn, What’s that flower you have on
Could it be a faded rose from days gone by

[VerySadAmerican]

Radio stations held contests. Who had the best guess of what was thrown off the bridge. Though Bobby Gentry never said, most think they were throwing a dead baby in the water.

An interesting note is Bobby Gentry grew up in L.A. She had relatives from the South be never spent much time there.

The movie was made PC, even back then. Billy Joe killed himself because he’d had a homo experience. That was NOT in the song.

[re_nortex]

I so enjoyed this being posted last year. Don’t know if it was you that did but it really went to me. Was actually just thinking of it yesterday, unaware of the exact day or what month even, lol, I do not know the lyrics that well.

Nice to hear this haunting song again. Really makes a summer memory.

Yep, lil' ol' me again. :) It's become an annual tradition and I think this is maybe my fifth year of doing so. When I see the calendar change on my computer to 03 June (CDT), I invariably think of the first line, "It was the third of June..."

Glad you like it, and unless the powers that be feel otherwise, I'll do it again on the third of June...2016...when Senator Ted Cruz ought to be well on his way to the election!

[re_nortex]

An interesting note is Bobby Gentry grew up in L.A. She had relatives from the South be never spent much time there.

Ping to a couple of FReepers for clarification on this. As far as I can determine, she was born in Mississippi and was there, in the Delta region, through the age of 13.

[razorback-bert]

Her parents were tenant farmers of my grandfather for awhile in east Mississippi.

[wardaddy]

I loved her as a boy

I'd a drank her bath water plenty...

[Irish Eyes]

Thanks for the memories

[Vendome]

[Vendome]

You loved her as a boy?

Weirdo...

LOL

[SaveFerris]

The clue is right in here, 2 times:

[’n’ 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”]

[SaveFerris]

and here

[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]

[Pelham]

That was such a great song and so different from everything else on the radio at the time. I don’t think there’s been another like it.

[PUGACHEV]

Last June 3rd there was another Ode to Billy Joe thread and someone posted an explanation of the song supposedly from Bobbie Gentry, although given many years later. The song, she said, was not about whatever was thrown from the bridge, or even about Billy Joe. The song was about the flow of life and death, and the casual way in which Billy Joe’s death was discussed over dinner along with other minutia and the general lack of interest it provoked.

[wardaddy]

My dad loved her too

I was 9 or 10

He was an old man in 1967 or at least he seemed it to me

All of 32 or 33

[GSWarrior]

Robbie Benson......