Ode To Billie Joe by Bobbie Gentry - Songfacts:
This tells the story of a guy who kills himself by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge. There really was a Tallahatchie Bridge in Greenwood, Mississippi (was? yes: The Tallahatchie Bridge collapsed in 1972), but Gentry made up the story.
Gentry: "The message of the song revolves around the nonchalant way the family talks about the suicide. nonchalance. The song is a study in unconscious cruelty." [nonchaloir to disregard, from non- + chaloir to be concerned , from Latin calēre to be warm]
Gentry sent a demo to the record company with just her voice and an acoustic guitar. They were so impressed with this rendition of the song that instead of re-recording it, they added strings and orchestration to the original demo, resulting in the version that became a huge hit. neat.
Bobbie Gentry was born Roberta Lee Streeter. She was born July 27, 1944 in Cickasaw County Mississippi. After seeing Ruby Gentry, a 1952 movie with Jennifer Jones and Charlton Heston, she started using Bobbie Gentry as a stage name.
When this became a hit, Rolling Stone magazine reported that it was only a 20 foot drop off the bridge and the water was deep enough so you would not get hurt. Of course, lots of people went to the bridge and jumped, which drove the local police nuts.
A movie of the same name was made based on this song in 1976. Gentry re-recorded this for the soundtrack.
-It was a comment on the calousness of a poor working family in rural Mississippi. The movie is absolutely fiction. Never happened. He even used "Bobbie Lee" as the heroine of the movie, the name Roberta Lee Streeter is called by her close friends and family. Another thing that lead to speculation out of the movie. Bobbie Lee is still alive, turned 61, has a grown son, and enjoys obscurity from the business. And by the way, just because she allowed Reba McIntire to record Fancy does not mean Roberta Lee Streeter doesn't hold the copyright! huh the song Fancy is by Bobbie Gentry huh.
- I'm a young woman who feels that Bobbie Gentry was quite unusual and such a talent of her time. You don't see many singers and performers like her today. There is definitely a quiet charm and sweetness about her. Ariel, Little Rock AR
-Gentry was briefly interviewed by a music magazine after the song came out. She went on record as saying that the 'something' thrown off the bridge was 'symbolic, and not a baby, as most people seem to think'. It never even occurred to me when I heard the song; from the end lyric, I assumed she and Billy Joe had thrown flowers into the water together, in a quiet courtship. me too. I always thought the young preacher was a gossip, and perhaps jealous, since he reports what he saw back to the mother, and perhaps made it -sound- suspicious. I know communities like those. Either people are constantly minding one another's business, or they're too exhausted from overwork to care deeply about anything. Only the narrator is badly shaken about the loss of her friend, while the mother is genuinely puzzled about why she isn't eating. Life goes on, after all, and there's cotton to be chopped.
-One of the great records. I don't care if she threw radioactive waste into the river. Not to make light of the poignant lyrics but that girl could sing her ass off in a style that (forgive the political incorrectness) I never dreamed she was white. The atmosphere of the recording had such a feel of the real rural, poor South in a way that erases the color line anyway.
--I did this song as a monologue for a drama class, it was great because everyone was absolutely hooked and then at the end I finished and everyone just burst into "well what does that mean?" and "huh?!" and "how how how?" I love this song.
-In the opening scene "Reservoir Dogs" Nice Guy Eddie analyzes the song, a song he had heard on KBLY for the first time in years, making him come to his (probably incorrect) deduction that the narrator threw Billy Joe off the bridge.-craig, madison, WI
-A very spooky song, as if William Faulkner wrote an episode of the Waltons. Never has an Ode said so little about the subject, but by laying the title above the song one can sense the enormous loss the narrator has suffered, the first of many losses. A different portrait of southern rural life than one normally gets. It's not the gossipy townsfolk. Instead, the family seems very midwestern in their passively skimming the topic of a local curiosity, and please pass the potatoes. The narrator hearing the banter, and not being able to talk, because you don't talk of private matters with the family. Very spooky in it's dark realism. -craig, madison, WI
-Ive just been to the town of Greenwood, MS which is where the Tallahatchie bridge used to be, and you can really feel what she expressed in her song so well. She sang it exactly how it feels to be there. Shes a great story teller in many of her songs, and often wrote so well about towns of Mississippi.
-I was a little girl when it came out and didn't understand exactly what went on, but I do remember it was haunting. The way Bobby Gentry sang it in a slow, almost husky voice, was the perfect delivery. It takes you back to those dusty, hot summers in the south. As I grew older I came to realize that it was about something forbidden; Bobby Gentry doesn't really say and that's the whole draw of the song. huh. I just thought, something not known. disregarded. (a friendship or love).

Ode to Billie Joe - Wkp: The mysteries surrounding the characters in the story created a cultural sensation. In 1975, Gentry told author Herman Raucher that she hadn't come up with a reason for Billie Joe's suicide when she wrote the song. She has stated in numerous interviews over the years that the focus of the song was not the suicide itself, but rather the matter-of-fact way that the narrator's family was discussing the tragedy over dinner, unaware that Billie Joe had been her boyfriend.
A popular speculation at the release of the song in 1967 was that the narrator and Billie Joe threw their baby (either stillborn or aborted) off the bridge, and Billie Joe then killed himself out of grief and guilt. There was also speculation that Billie Joe was a black man, having a forbidden affair with the white narrator.

The song's popularity proved so enduring that in 1976, nine years after its release, Warner Bros. commissioned author Herman Raucher to adapt it into a novel and screenplay, Ode to Billy Joe (note different spelling). The poster's tagline, which treats the film as being based on actual events and even gives a date of death for Billy (June 3, 1953), led many to believe that the song was based on actual events.

Amazon.com: Ode to Billy Joe (Dell): Books: Herman Raucher
Dell Pub Co; 3rd edition (March 1976)