Post by tannis on Jul 27, 2009 2:27:22 GMT
Celebrity birthday for July 27: Singer Bobbie Gentry is 65.
Bobbie Gentry - Ode To Billie Joe
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLlKYY-1O7Q
"Ode to Billie Joe" is a 1967 song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a singer-songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. The single, released in late July, was a number-one hit in the USA, and became a big international seller. The song is ranked #412 on the Rolling Stone magazine's list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
This song is a first person narrative that reveals a quasi-Southern Gothic tale in its verses by including the dialog of the narrator's immediate family at dinnertime on the day that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." Throughout the song, the shocking fact of the suicide and other tragedies are contrasted with the banality of everyday routine and polite conversation in a way that makes the events seem even more shocking to the listener than if the participants had immediately reacted in horror to the news.
A popular speculation at the release of the song in 1967 (unsupported by either the song's lyrics or the culture of that area and time period) was that the narrator and Billie Joe threw their baby (live, stillborn or aborted) off the bridge, and Billie Joe then killed himself out of grief and guilt. This version of events is accentuated in the Sinéad O'Connor version, where a baby is heard to cry at the moment the mystery item is thrown off the bridge. Gentry continually dismissed the belief that the song was biographical. At the height of the song's popularity, numerous rumors circulated that Ms. Gentry had been questioned by Mississippi police.
Bobbie Gentry - Ode to Billie Joe
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZt5Q-u4crc&feature=related
Sinead O'Connor Billie Joe
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzJJDzygeUs
Bobbie Gentry - Ode To Billie Joe
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLlKYY-1O7Q
"Ode to Billie Joe" is a 1967 song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a singer-songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. The single, released in late July, was a number-one hit in the USA, and became a big international seller. The song is ranked #412 on the Rolling Stone magazine's list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
This song is a first person narrative that reveals a quasi-Southern Gothic tale in its verses by including the dialog of the narrator's immediate family at dinnertime on the day that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." Throughout the song, the shocking fact of the suicide and other tragedies are contrasted with the banality of everyday routine and polite conversation in a way that makes the events seem even more shocking to the listener than if the participants had immediately reacted in horror to the news.
A popular speculation at the release of the song in 1967 (unsupported by either the song's lyrics or the culture of that area and time period) was that the narrator and Billie Joe threw their baby (live, stillborn or aborted) off the bridge, and Billie Joe then killed himself out of grief and guilt. This version of events is accentuated in the Sinéad O'Connor version, where a baby is heard to cry at the moment the mystery item is thrown off the bridge. Gentry continually dismissed the belief that the song was biographical. At the height of the song's popularity, numerous rumors circulated that Ms. Gentry had been questioned by Mississippi police.
Bobbie Gentry - Ode to Billie Joe
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZt5Q-u4crc&feature=related
Sinead O'Connor Billie Joe
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzJJDzygeUs
