# Ode to Billy Joe
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 13, 2000, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929 "2000-11-13T00:40:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2000, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/1 "2000-11-13T00:40:54Z")
In this lone hit song for Bobby Gentry, I’ve always been puzzled by one part of the song. There is a reference to the narrator of the tale (the singer that is) and Billy Joe throwing some off the Tallahachie Bridge a few days before Billy Joe kills himself by jumping off the bridge?
Just what was it that was being thrown off the bridge?
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### Author:  [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2000, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/2 "2000-11-13T00:45:46Z")
We had a thread on this earlier, but I’m too lazy to look it up, and I don’t think we came to any definitive conclusions anyway.
Me, I always figured the song was a veiled reference to an illicit abortion, and that Billy Joe wound up feeling so guilty about it that he killed himself. That’s just a wild guess, though.
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### Author:  [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2000, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/3 "2000-11-13T01:15:02Z")
Thanks, I’ll look for this in the archive. I thought an abortion of some type was likely.
I think they should sell Cliff Notes for this particular song.
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### Author:  [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2000, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/4 "2000-11-13T01:16:49Z")
I once asked my mom about this, and she said Billy Joe was gay, and couldn’t handle admitting it. So he jumped.
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### Author:  [@omni-not](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/omni-not)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2000, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/5 "2000-11-13T01:23:28Z")
This URL sheds a bit of light:
[http://www.progression.co.uk/reviews/profile.htm](http://www.progression.co.uk/reviews/profile.htm)
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### Author:  [@omni-not](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/omni-not)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2000, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/6 "2000-11-13T01:33:55Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Those who wondered about such matters missed the point of the song, according to Gentry. “The song is a sort of a study in unconscious cruelty. But everybody seems more concerned with what was thrown off the bridge than they are with the thoughtlessness of people expressed in the song. (…) Everybody … has a different guess about what was thrown off the bridge - flowers, a ring, even a baby. Anyone who hears the song can think what they want … but the real ‘message’ of the song, if there must be a message, revolves around the nonchalant way the family talks about the suicide.”
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### Author:  [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2000, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/7 "2000-11-13T02:00:59Z")
Darn songwriters and their lack of intent. Bobby Gentry’s just like Don McLean. We want answers here, not moody introspection!
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### Author:  [@omni-not](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/omni-not)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2000, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/8 "2000-11-13T03:15:19Z")
Incidental footnotes:
The song was recorded on July 10, 1967 in less than an hour, with Gentry accompanying herself on guitar. Violins and cellos were added later. It originally ran more than seven minutes and was shortened so as to be put on a 45 rpm as the “B” side of ‘Mississippi Delta’.
(Source: The Billboard Book of Number One Hits)
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### Author:  [@Sigmundex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmundex)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2000, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/9 "2000-11-13T04:20:38Z")
Haven’t you guys seen the movie? Yeah, it’s a real cheesy late 70’s classic. Starring Robbie Benson, with his gay love portrayed by the guy that played Sherrif Roscoe P. Coltrane on the Dukes of Hazzard. To tell you the truth, after seeing the movie, you’ll wish you could go to the time when it had your own personal interpretation to it and not some movie studio’s.
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### Author:  [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2000, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/10 "2000-11-13T15:07:50Z")
Yeah, that movie also features Robbie Benson delivering perhaps the worst fake southern accent in cinematic history.
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### Author:  [@Beruang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beruang)
#### Post date: [November 15, 2000, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/11 "2000-11-15T04:38:08Z")
Did the longer version of the song contain any extra verses that might shed some light on the mystery?
I was always told it had something to do with drugs. Damned long-haired hippie freaks…
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### Author:  [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)
#### Post date: [November 15, 2000, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-billy-joe/40929/12 "2000-11-15T15:07:35Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by omni-not \*
> **The song was recorded on July 10, 1967**
Roughly a month after the U.S. release of SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND.
Maybe they were throwing the album off the bridge as a symbolic protest of overt psychedelia in popular music.