# One of the creepiest and most beautiful videos you will ever see or hear: Ode to Billie Joe
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [June 4, 2014, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991 "2014-06-04T03:36:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/1 "2014-06-04T03:36:04Z")
NPR covered this artist from the 60’s today. I had never heard of her and assumed she was a black woman on the radio but no. She is a white woman that sang some of the creepiest story songs combined with some bizarre imagery in the video. She does have a great voice though.
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZt5Q-u4crc)
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### Author:  [@DChord568](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DChord568)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/2 "2014-06-04T03:47:21Z")
“Ode to Billie Joe” was certainly Bobbie’s signature number (a #1 in that summer of 1967), but there was much more to her than that one song. She was an immensely talented singer and songwriter (and was awfully nice to look at too).
I used to play the hell out of her second album _The Delta Sweete_. In addition to any number of fine originals, it also had what I count as the best version ever of Doug Kershaw’s “Louisiana Man.”
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### Author:  [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/3 "2014-06-04T04:02:03Z")
> [@DChord568](#):
>
> “Ode to Billie Joe” was certainly Bobbie’s signature number (a #1 in that summer of 1967), but there was much more to her than that one song. She was an immensely talented singer and songwriter (and was awfully nice to look at too).
>
> I used to play the hell out of her second album _The Delta Sweete_. In addition to any number of fine originals, it also had what I count as the best version ever of Doug Kershaw’s “Louisiana Man.”
I was captivated by her voice. The only other vocalist that I have ever had the same reaction to is Karen Carpenter. I had never heard of her before but she had extreme talent. She was extremely attractive too. That video and story song are very creepy but I have never considered that a bad thing overall.
I have to look up her other songs. Any recommendations? I love that style of music.
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### Author:  [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/4 "2014-06-04T04:03:00Z")
Interesting guitar work, and I didn’t know until now that was her playing it. And producing it. The record company supposedly cut a few minutes off it and I can’t find a version with them, but I suppose they won’t help explain what happened. [According to Gentry,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Billie_Joe) she doesn’t know why Billie Joe killed himself and its real theme was indifference:.
> [@Bobbi Gentry](#):
>
> Those questions are of secondary importance in my mind. The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes. First, the illustration of a group of peoples’ reactions to the life and death of Billie Joe, and its subsequent effect on their lives, is made. Second, the obvious gap between the girl and her mother is shown when both women experience a common loss (first Billie Joe, and later, Papa), and yet Mama and the girl are unable to recognize their mutual loss or share their grief.
Talented woman who just got sick of show biz.
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### Author:  [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/5 "2014-06-04T05:31:45Z")
Oh, I’m glad you posted this! I heard this song on the radio about a year ago and loved it, and also assumed it was a black woman singing it. Glad to watch the video and know who the artist is.
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### Author:  [@SantaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SantaMan)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/6 "2014-06-04T05:43:22Z")
Dear Lord, you are making me feel ooooold.
I remember the New Yorker (?) cartoon about a bunch of folks at the beach with their transistor radios (!) tuned to different stations all playing “Ode” - It was played to death for a while.
The movie based on it was O.K., I guess.
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### Author:  [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/7 "2014-06-04T08:08:18Z")
I guess I’m older than some of you. I remember this song from when it first became a hit. I may have even seen that performance on The Smothers Brothers (my family watched that show).
I think the set depicting a family with indistinct faces captures the theme of the song (as quoted by **dropzone** , above) - these people occupy a room and talk to each other, but they don’t really pay attention to each others’ feelings. I wonder whether Bobbie Gentry designed the set herself.
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### Author:  [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/8 "2014-06-04T10:50:01Z")
> [@dropzone](#):
>
> [According to Gentry,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Billie_Joe) she doesn’t know why Billie Joe killed himself and its real theme was indifference:.
You mean he didn’t do it because he has sex with a man and liked it? That what I was led to believe by the movie.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/9 "2014-06-04T11:16:12Z")
The song wasn’t really about Billy Joe and his suicide. It was about the singer. She is, in her own way, just as oblivious to Billy Joe’s death as the rest of her family is.
We can see that there’s very little life in this small unnamed community. People are born, they live, and they die there without leaving a mark. It’s worth noting that nobody in the family even has a name.
What Billie Joe represented to the singer was an opportunity to escape this fate. While we don’t know the details, it appears he offered her a chance to leave town with him and she rejected his offer out of fear of the unknown and chose to remain in the known safety of the community. Billie Joe then killed himself.
The singer now sees the path of her future more clearly. She will never leave now and will grow older and live the same existence her parents did before her. She lost her one chance to escape and it is that loss and not the loss of Billie Joe himself that she regrets.
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### Author:  [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/10 "2014-06-04T12:14:19Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> The song wasn’t really about Billy Joe and his suicide. It was about the singer. She is, in her own way, just as oblivious to Billy Joe’s death as the rest of her family is.
>
> We can see that there’s very little life in this small unnamed community. People are born, they live, and they die there without leaving a mark. It’s worth noting that nobody in the family even has a name.
>
> What Billie Joe represented to the singer was an opportunity to escape this fate. While we don’t know the details, it appears he offered her a chance to leave town with him and she rejected his offer out of fear of the unknown and chose to remain in the known safety of the community. Billie Joe then killed himself.
>
> The singer now sees the path of her future more clearly. She will never leave now and will grow older and live the same existence her parents did before her. She lost her one chance to escape and it is that loss and not the loss of Billie Joe himself that she regrets.
You mean it wasn’t the guilt after throwing the aborted baby off the bridge that made him kill himself?
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### Author:  [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/11 "2014-06-04T12:26:16Z")
I realized late last night that it was the “third of June”\* and we hadn’t resurrected the annual thread. I was going to come in and say something, but it really was quite late.
\*another sleepy, dusty Delta day
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/12 "2014-06-04T13:11:06Z")
> [@dropzone](#):
>
> Interesting guitar work, and I didn’t know until now that was her playing it. And producing it. The record company supposedly cut a few minutes off it and I can’t find a version with them, but I suppose they won’t help explain what happened. [According to Gentry,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Billie_Joe) she doesn’t know why Billie Joe killed himself and its real theme was indifference:.
> Talented woman who just got sick of show biz.
Yeah, all those 7ths give it a haunting sound. When I was in Nam, my mother sent me a record album recorded by Gentry and Glen Campbell, music I was most definitely not interested in at the time. I think I threw it away. :smack:
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/13 "2014-06-04T13:21:37Z")
If you do a search on the SDMB, you’ll find several threads in which we discuss this song. If you never heard this song before, Shagnasty, you’re a lot younger than I expected. For that matter, I don’t understand how you could have been on the board since 2000 and not encountered the threads about the song. The filmmakers didn’t consult Bobby Jo Gentry about the meaning of the song. They just made up their own interpretation of it.
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### Author:  [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/14 "2014-06-04T13:48:03Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> If you do a search on the SDMB, you’ll find several threads in which we discuss this song. If you never heard this song before, Shagnasty, you’re a lot younger than I expected.
I’m 31 and this thread makes _me_ feel old.
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### Author:  [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/15 "2014-06-04T14:10:13Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> If you do a search on the SDMB, you’ll find several threads in which we discuss this song. If you never heard this song before, Shagnasty, you’re a lot younger than I expected. For that matter, I don’t understand how you could have been on the board since 2000 and not encountered the threads about the song. The filmmakers didn’t consult Bobby Jo Gentry about the meaning of the song. They just made up their own interpretation of it.
I am 40 so the song is older than I am. I don’t remember ever running across threads about it before but maybe I did and it just didn’t register because I didn’t know the song from title.
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### Author:  [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/16 "2014-06-04T14:10:29Z")
> [@DChord568](#):
>
> “Ode to Billie Joe” was certainly Bobbie’s signature number (a #1 in that summer of 1967), but there was much more to her than that one song. She was an immensely talented singer and songwriter (and was awfully nice to look at too).
>
> I used to play the hell out of her second album _The Delta Sweete_. In addition to any number of fine originals, it also had what I count as the best version ever of Doug Kershaw’s “Louisiana Man.”
Except for Doug Kershaw’s version ;). I haven’t heard mention of Doug Kershaw in years, I had two of his albums and played the bejesus out of them. Great Cajun music!
I hear “Ode to Billy Joe” on oldies radio frequently, it never ever grows old (and speaking of old, I remember it back in the day. We puzzled over what was thrown off that bridge…)
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### Author:  [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/17 "2014-06-04T14:12:13Z")
Concurrent thread over in MPSIMS
> **[It's Billie Joe McAllister Day!](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=725038)**
>
> Sure is hot out here. Is it dinner time yet?
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### Author:  [@DChord568](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DChord568)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/18 "2014-06-04T14:24:13Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> If you do a search on the SDMB, you’ll find several threads in which we discuss this song. If you never heard this song before, Shagnasty, you’re a lot younger than I expected. For that matter, I don’t understand how you could have been on the board since 2000 and not encountered the threads about the song. The filmmakers didn’t consult Bobby Jo Gentry about the meaning of the song. They just made up their own interpretation of it.
Right. Just as stuff happens in the Peanuts TV specials that was never a part of the comic strip (e.g., an actual portrayal of Charlie Brown’s little red-headed girl), what is portrayed in the movie version of “Ode to Billie Joe” is irrelevant to the song itself.
We can all have fun with imagined interpretations, but the point is there’s nothing in the song that gives any of them any more credence than another. Bobbie Gentry is right to leave the details forever sketchy and unresolved.
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### Author:  [@cjepson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjepson)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/19 "2014-06-04T14:32:42Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#):
>
> I was captivated by her voice. The only other vocalist that I have ever had the same reaction to is Karen Carpenter. I had never heard of her before but she had extreme talent. She was extremely attractive too. That video and story song are very creepy but I have never considered that a bad thing overall.
>
> I have to look up her other songs. Any recommendations? I love that style of music.
“[Niki Hoeky](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dyo_xZnvsA)”, originally recorded by P.J. Proby in '67, an early example of swamp rock, kind of silly but fun.
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### Author:  [@DChord568](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DChord568)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991/20 "2014-06-04T14:44:18Z")
> [@Chefguy](#):
>
> Yeah, all those 7ths give it a haunting sound.
Bobbie, who played acoustic guitar on the recording, actually plays a D7 with an added 2nd (x54530), followed by a straight D9 (x54555) with the bass playing A. Unusual combination of chords, but it really works well.
> [@](#):
>
> When I was in Nam, my mother sent me a record album recorded by Gentry and Glen Campbell, music I was most definitely not interested in at the time. I think I threw it away. :smack:
There was an attempt to take Bobbie in a really show-bizzy direction, which I always thought was a huge mistake. It’s just my interpretation, but I always felt she was a true Southern girl, albeit a very intelligent and wordly-wise one, who never felt comfortable in that environment.
She was married for a time to country/novelty singer Jim Stafford (“Spiders and Snakes,” “Swamp Witch,” “Wildwood Weed,” etc.) but at some point just walked away from the whole thing.
Which to me is a great loss.
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-creepiest-and-most-beautiful-videos-you-will-ever-see-or-hear-ode-to-billie-joe/689991.md?page=2)