May 24, 2025

1 thought on “Did You Know: The Lost “Ode to Billy Joe” Lyrics are in the Ole Miss Archives

  1. This song popped into my head last week, and I remember most of the lyrics but it bugged me that I couldn’t remember them all.
    I was a young teenager in 1967 when this song was played on the local AM radio station. I really liked the song because it tells a compelling story tinged with mystery. Several times my friends and I sat around discussing the lyrics, especially the part about throwing something off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
    We all decided that it had to be a gun, and that Billy Joe had accidentally killed a man. They were disposing of the gun so nobody would suspect him, but the cops were coming to get him, so he jumped off the bridge. That was the only speculation that seemed to make sense to us. Others had the baby/fetus theory, but that was just too unlikely even to our teenage imaginations.
    I never saw the movie – it was released 9 years later and I was too over the song by then to care about seeing it.
    I’d enjoy hearing Bobbie Gentry’s original song. The strings are my favorite part of the song, though. Especially the last 12 bars where the strings start at a very high note and tumble down to a very low note and holds it for 4 beats. It reminds me of flowers floating down and falling into the water.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *