Of course it was flowers. This song is simply about a young girl in love with a young boy who killed himself for some reason.
The reason he killed himself is not really important. Her feelings for him and the fact nobody knew or cared and that she seemed to be a shy young country girl who kept her feelings to herself is what is so touching about the song.
Although there is always the possibility that she and Billie Jo were selling crack cocaine to the sawmill workers up on Choctaw Ridge and some hillbilly narc was closing in so they dumped some of it from the bridge.
Thing is, most of the Tallahatchie River Bridges I’ve seen are not anything like high enough to be a fatal fall. Might sprain an ankle or drown, but the fall ain’t gonna kill ya. And drowning in the Tallahtachie would take some doing, too. Even from the middle of the river, if you can swim even 10 yards, you’d probably be able to wade the rest of the way to shore most of the time. If Bobbie was chopping cotton, her brother was bailing hay, and her father was plowing, then the ground is probably reasonably dry–so the river wouldn’t be at flood stages.
There are a couple of stories in B.A. Botkin’s Treasury of Southern Folklore about the chickens running to hide when they saw the preacher coming up the road to dinner. In folksay, when the preacher came to dinner, he was served fried chicken.
Oakminster, you seem to be pretty au courant with ways rural and southern; does it make sense that Papa’d be plowing while Sister was chopping cotton? Seems to me that chopping cotton is something you do in the middle of the growing cycle. But I’m a city Southerner, ‘n’ Ah don’t know nuthin ‘bout growin’ no cotton.
I don’t know anything about chopping cotton, but I know that around here (Middle Tennessee) cotton is usually not picked until the first frost .A little too late to be baling, too. I always wondered about that bit in Walk the Line about it being so hot when Johnny Cash and his brother were picking cotton.
Obviously Brother Taylor has designs on the farm. Daddy’s dead, Mama’s getting old and the brother has moved into the city. That pretty much leaves her the farm, and if she marries, the preacher will have a nice 2nd income.
Just curious, how many posters saw the movie. I know it’s not necessarily verbatim what Gentry had in mind when she wrote the song.
ETA: If my vague memories of growing up in Mississippi are correct (and I’ve tried my best to blot them out), people did sometime (shallow) plow later in the season to aerate the soil and/or loosen the weeds. At least, I think that’s what they were doing.
So maybe Billie Joe’s not dead at all, but “Today Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge and is in the hospital with a broken leg and three cracked ribs” just didn’t flow as well.
I uploaded this mp3 this morning. She’s a local artist who I couldn’t find on YouTube. Anyway, this is the only version of the song I’m familiar with; in fact, I didn’t even know it was a cover til I joined the Dope. She leaves no mystery, she pushed him.
eta: I think that’s why Brother Taylor’s comment is so loaded. He saw it.
Setting aside the fact that “leaving no mystery” sort of defeats the entire purpose of the song, this doesn’t square with what Brother Taylor says, which is “She and Billie Jo was throwin’ something off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
A joint action…not one person doing something to the other. If he had really seen the narrator push Billie Jo off the bridge, it would would take a very evil preacher indeed to “drop by” casually and be coy about describing it.
In any case, bah to remakes…particularly in this instance. Bobbie Gentry owns this song, and there’s no reason for anyone else to ever sing it.
I’ve read interviews where she stated she wasn’t interested in the back-story and didn’t develop it, but the idea that there was no back-story at all isn’t realistic. After all, if nothing was going on behind the scenes, then the song loses all its’ mysterious allure - it becomes a recounting of a drab lunch-time conversation in a deep south kitchen. That’s not nearly as interesting.
Gentry must certainly have known that the mystery about what Billie Joe and her narrator were up to at Chocktaw Ridge was going to sell the song, much like Carly Simons’ song “You’re So Vain” - speculation about what it really meant led to its’ popular longevity. Unlike Simon’s song, Gentry’s song doesn’t have a definite answer, but I think Gentry it does invite speculation on what occurred, and that’s what’s so fun about the song.
So, of course my own interpretation is just speculation, and no more valid than anybody else’s explanation, but then it can’t be refuted either. So, if I imagine Brother Taylor as an oily, Mitchum-esque horn dog who held lust in his heart for Gentry’s narrator, then it can’t really be dismissed.
After all, what was the parish preacher doing up at Chocktaw Ridge any way? The only thing we know about the place is that “nothing ever good happens” up there.
I agree with you, I was only describing the song as I always heard it, where the narrator states in the beginning Billie Joe was getting too hot and heavy so she pushed him. So with that in mind, yes, the preacher is a blackmailer. And she’s a murderer. Lot different from the original, which is better. I like the mystery, too. Do we know what the original verses were that Bobbie Gentry had to cut? I wonder if Sue Rozler added the original material back in, or just made stuff up.
My guess is there’s no really deep mystery. The singer and Billie Joe were seeing each other. They would get together at the bridge and throw flowers off it because that was the only place where they had any privacy. But Billie Joe came from the wrong side of town so they had to break up. She was able to handle it but he couldn’t and committed suicide.
I always thought the point exactly was that the narrator’s family had a drab lunch-time conversation about Billie Joe’s suicide. The overall vibe I get from the song is that their lives consist of little more than hard work and that untimely death is common. The narrator seems a little more introspective (or perhaps just moody) than her family at first, but she casually mentions her father’s death with no great emphasis or emotion. I’m not even sure she was more than just friends with BJ. When she concludes her little story by noting she spends her time throwing flowers in the river, it seems to me that she isn’t mourning BJ quite so much as mourning that she is allowing her life to pass in such a dreary and soulless place.
well Scumpup’s post just proves what a wonderful mystery this song is - since I would never in a million years have interpreted the song the way he did.
I’ve lived in homes like the one Gentry described with such economy in her song - & just because it’s down South or because it’s hard working, doesn’t mean it’s a dreary, souless life or place!
PS - I always thought they threw a ring off that bridge, not a baby, not flowers.
To divert a little bit, if the conversation had taken place, as stated, in the Southern half of my family, it would have been interpreted this way.
“The preacher saw Billy Joe and you up on the bridge. You’d best try to keep your private business a little more private because if the preacher saw you, others might have, too. I don’t want to be having to go around defending your good name; so don’t give others cause to talk. Mind your business better.”