Bobbie Gentry Ode To Billie Joe Lyrics

Ode To Billie Joe Lyrics

Ode To Billie Joe

-Artist: Bobbie Gentry
-peak Billboard position # 1
for 4 weeks in 1967
-Words and Music by Bobbie Gentry


It was the
third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin' cotton and
my brother was balin' hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to
the house to eat
And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all remember to wipe
your feet"
And then she said "I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw
Ridge"
"Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie
Bridge"

'n' Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed
peas
"Well Billy Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits,
please"
"There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow"
'n'
Mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin' ever comes
to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off
the Tallahatchie Bridge

'n' Brother said he recollected when he and Tom
and Billie Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture
show
And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night?
"I'll
have another piece-a apple pie, you know it don't seem right"
"I saw him at
the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge"
"And now ya tell me Billie Joe's
jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

'n' Mama said to me "Child, what's
happened to your appetite?"
"I've been cookin' all morning and you haven't
touched a single bite"
"That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by
today"
"Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way"
"He
said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge"
"And she
and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

A year
has come 'n' gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe
'n' Brother married
Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus going 'round,
Papa caught it and he died last Spring
And now Mama doesn't seem to wanna do
much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw
Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie
Bridge


Transcribed by Robin Hood