Few songs are entangled with the concept of apathy quite like Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 country hit, “Ode To Billie Joe”. From the songwriting to the production process to the song’s public reception, apathy seems to be the common thread in this Southern Gothic tale. In each stage of the song’s journey, there is an apparent lack of regard for others’ well-being. An indifference to suffering, both potential and realized.
“Ode To Billie Joe” follows a first-person narrative of a girl at a family dinner. Her parents and brother are discussing the suicide of a local boy, Billie Joe MacAllister, who jumped to his death off the Tallahatchee Bridge. The tragic news is interjected with nonchalant dinner talk. “Pass the biscuits, please.” “I’ll have another slice of apple pie,” etc. Meanwhile, the narrator can’t even eat her food. The song also implies the narrator and Billie Joe were romantically connected and seen together on the bridge the night before, throwing an unknown object into the water.
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The point of the song, Gentry argued in the year of its release, was the family’s apathetic reaction. “The song is sort of a study in unconscious cruelty,” Gentry said, per The Paducah Sun. “Everybody seems more concerned with what was thrown off the bridge than they are with the thoughtlessness of people expressed in the song. What was thrown off the bridge really isn’t that important.”
“Ode To Billie Joe” Saw a Different Kind of Apathy First
Upon its July 1967 release, “Ode To Billie Joe” proved its point. Just like the song’s characters, all of whom focus on what isn’t important, the public’s focus zoomed in on the unknown object. Some guessed a wedding ring. Other suggestions ranged from topical to downright grim, including draft cards and aborted fetuses. Despite the widespread conjecture, Bobbie Gentry never budged in keeping the item a secret. Whatever it was, she said, wasn’t the point she was trying to make. So, why bother revealing what it was at all?
Interestingly, a different kind of apathy almost changed the trajectory of “Ode To Billie Joe” during the pre-production phase. In the mid-1960s, Gentry was dating a songwriter named Jim Ford. Ford was a prolific writer who worked with artists like P.J. Proby, The Temptations, and Aretha Franklin. But according to Bobbie Gentry’s Ode To Billie Joe by Tara Murtha, Ford was also known to copy songs he heard from other people and claim them as his own.
And that’s precisely what he did with “Ode To Billie Joe”. A song like that could—and would eventually—be a career-defining vehicle for a rising artist like Gentry. Yet while pitching the song to Del-Fi Records (where a future Barry White was working as an A&R man), Ford claimed he wrote the song. Gentry was only there, he said, because he needed her to sing it. Ultimately, though, Del-Fi passed on the song. Capitol Records picked it up instead, and the song was released with Gentry as the sole songwriter. According to Murtha’s book, Ford often told people that it was his song when he saw them out and about, though he never made official claims to the media.
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