Jackson Jambalaya

Listened to “Ode To Billy Joe “ earlier this morning. My grandparents lived a cotton field away from the bridge that was used in the movie, and Grandad played a small part in the movie. The bridge was between Sidon and Roebuck, just south of Greenwood. Great memories of childhood.

I think it was a tractor transmission.

I spent a life in radio broadcasting. I heard someone called Bobbie’s label MCA in Nashville a few years back seeking info on the reclusive singer. When they asked “where can we find Bobbie Gentry” the answer was “we don’t know where he is.”

Wish I had married Becky Thompson. Tupelo is a nice town.

Hey Sid, learn to spell short words.

In Bobbie Gentry's song Ode to Billie Joe, nobody knows for certain what was thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Gentry deliberately left it a mystery. She later said that the specific object was not the main point of the song; the song was more about the family's indifferent reaction to Billie Joe's death and the emotional isolation of the characters.

Over the years, listeners have suggested many possibilities, including:

A baby
A wedding ring
Flowers
A draft card
Something symbolic of a broken relationship

Gentry acknowledged the speculation but refused to reveal a definitive answer, saying the object itself was not important to the song's meanin

"She later said that the specific object was not the main point of the song; the song was more about the family's indifferent reaction to Billie Joe's death"

An indifferent response to a horrendous event is most noted among people that have been made hard through a hard life. Hard times make hard people, good times make soft people, that's why you have people all in their feelings today.

Not sure all these lyrics are correct.

"Ode to Billy Joel" by Slap Happy
Sung to the tune of Ode to Billy Joe

It was the 3rd of June another sooty smoggy Brooklyn day
I was upstairs chopping cocaine, my brother was smoking a J
I hollered down to mama, "can you tell me what's for dinner please?"
She said we might go to the Peking Palace, get some take-out Chinese
And then she said I heard some news this morning when I was in Bay Ridge
They say that Billy Joel jumped off the Verrazano Bridge

Do you remember when Billy sang Only the Good Die Young?
Papa said "If that was true he'd be here today, pass the egg foo yung"
And Mama said "I really liked him with Liza Minelli in that movie Cabaret"
I said, "Mama that wasn't Billy Joel, that was Joel Gray"
She said, "That's right, we saw that at the cinema in Bay
Ridge...so who's the hell's this Billy Joel who jumped
off the Verrazano bridge?"

Well, Papa hardly touched his egg roll, he wasn't feeling up to par
I said Daddy that's OK, I love you just the way you are
I said I met that new rabbi Jacob Goldstein in the street today
He asked, why weren't you in temple on Saturday--oh by the way
He said he saw a man who looked a lot like you, Papa, up in Bay Ridge
And he and Billy Joel were throwing someone off the Verrazzano bridge

A year has come and gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joel
The music scene has changed, there's a new trend in rock and roll
It seems that making that big splash has been one of the latest things
Oops, there goes Paul McCartney--guess he forgot his Wings
And now there's Elton, Rod, and Mick giving farewell concerts at Bay Ridge
And now papa's scalping tickets all along the Verrazzano bridge

I'm the piano man
And I'm in a New York State of Mind
But it's all just rock n roll to me
Because you Catholic girls start way too young
I'm in a New York State of Mind
I love me just the way I am... (marmelmm)

Any male in Mississippi who ascribes to be an historian, or a southern cultural proponent, or simply a boot wearing, God fearing, man or woman must know about Bobbie Gentry. Age is no excuse.

One would think that Sid would know the difference between bailing and baleing. Guess he never tossed many bales on the back of a truck or a trailer

Correcting myself…Capitol Records.

The time has come to reveal what was thrown from the bridge, and why. Mr. McAllister planned to go to Mississippi College, become a lawyer, and smuggle weed and blow to his clients in jail. He had been working in the fields since birth to buy t-shirts, sweatshirts, coozies, hats, stickers, and all sorts of other officially licensed shit. But then, he had a premonition that it would all be for naught, and he didn't want a lousy degree from some "University," dammit! He wanted to be a "COLLEGE man." So, one night, he talked his gal pal into helping him toss all that stuff off the bridge. But then, despair overtook him, he couldn't bear the loss, and so, he joined his beloved officially-licensed items. The narrator/Bobbie Lee Hartley wasn't hungry because she worried that she and the rest of their crowd were all morons, too. The rest of the family didn't care much because, of course, they already knew the whole bunch of 'em were a pack of drooling idiots and feeble-minded simpletons. And also of course, the "person" who saw them throw the stuff was really a sly ol' fox - all that 60s hippy-dippy allegorical horseshit.

In the as-yet-unreleased sequel song, "Screw Billie Joe, He's Dead Anyway," his body gets sucked up into a powerplant cooling system, where it causes a meltdown. The Narrator/Bobbie Lee leads the Mayor of Jackson, the Hinds County DA, and a water system guy on a mission to rid Mississippi of the boo-boo water. As one could see coming, the mayor and DA turn out to be crooks, but Bobbie Lee and the water guy turn out to be uncover FBI, and their handler, a Federal judge, flies in on a shitty little private plane, hires a yacht, and speeds across the Res to rescue his agents. They all go to the lobby bar at the Jackson Hilton and get drunk with lobbyists. The new mystery is why in the high-holy-hell is there some story about leading tours in Italy to find okra recipes in the liner notes.

Hey, I'm just trying to tied a few threads together.

Used that movie bridge many miles going back and forth between my hometown of Belzoni and the Crystal Grill in Greenwood, and then to Ole Miss and back. It was torn down some years after the movie.

I thought the movie explanation for what they threw off the bridge was awful.

WTF? You'll allow Billy Joel to jump off a NYC bridge while those damn yankees what don't care about him scarf eggrolls from a Mott Street takeaway but a playful hyper-local, even all JJ, spoof r-i-i-i-i-i-ppppp-ed from the week's stories is a no-go?

Alrighty, then. The time has come to reveal what was thrown from the bridge, and why. Mr. McAllister planned to go to Mississippi College, become a lawyer, and smuggle weed and blow to his clients in jail. He had been working in the fields since birth to buy t-shirts, sweatshirts, coozies, hats, stickers, and all sorts of other officially licensed shit. But then, he had a premonition that it would all be for naught, and he didn't want a lousy degree from some "University," dammit! He wanted to be a "COLLEGE man." So, one night, he talked his gal pal into helping him toss all that stuff off the bridge. But then, despair overtook him, he couldn't bear the loss, and so, he joined his beloved officially-licensed items. The narrator/Bobbie Lee Hartley wasn't hungry because she worried that she and the rest of their crowd were all morons, too. The rest of the family didn't care much because, of course, they already knew the whole bunch of 'em were a pack of drooling idiots and feeble-minded simpletons. And also of course, the "person" who saw them throw the stuff was really a sly ol' fox - all that 60s hippy-dippy allegorical horseshit.

In the yet-unreleased sequel song, "Screw Billie Joe, He's Dead Anyway," his body gets sucked up into a powerplant cooling system, where it causes a meltdown. The Narrator/Bobbie Lee leads the Mayor of Jackson, the Hinds County DA, and a water system guy on a mission to rid Mississippi of the boo-boo water. As one could see coming, the mayor and DA turn out to be crooks, but Bobbie Lee and the water guy turn out to be uncover FBI, and their handler, a Federal judge, flies in on a shitty little private plane, hires a yacht, and speeds across the Res to rescue his agents. They all go to the lobby bar at the Jackson Hilton and get drunk with lobbyists. The new mystery is why in the high-holy-hell is there some story about leading tours in Italy to find okra recipes in the liner notes.

Hey, I'm just trying to tie a few threads together.

2:57, they should've moved that bridge to somewhere over by 'The Babydoll House'. ...would've made a grand setting for bridal party photos - and been something for wedding write-ups in Mississippi Magazine.

I was an adolescent, when a cousin took my great-grandmother, grandmother, mom, and me, to see the movie.

We lived in a county adjacent TWO counties which each were about to "git uh Wendy's", and so we were sophisticates of the first order. We HAD TO see that movie, since rumors were that there were "bad women from Yazoo City" in it. Since that was (mostly in the past tense) the family business, we expected to be inspired.

I have a male friend who, at 13, was taken to a showing of Gone With the Wind, in Baton Rouge, as an Old South indoctrination experience, and to imprint him on decidedly-non-blonde women, in the hopes that he would marry some off-brand heiress and buy an antebellum mansion and wear ascots or something. Backfired, though, and Scarlett's nonstop histrionics immunized him instead of imprinting him, and he was 'strictly-blondes-only' from that moment on.

And if my elders were hoping that seeing the Yazoo City Fancy Women working the fair, was going to inspire me to eventually open my own house and put us back on top, that, too backfired.

I'll never forget that scary claw coming out of the curtain, to mysteriously beckon Billie Joe and his companions inside the makeshift brothel. We were all howling so loud, we disrupted half the drive-in with our laughter.

Subsequently, though, Mama and Grandmama each wandered off into the darkness, if I'm remembering right, and made a bit of money. So, attracting attention wasn't all bad.

And, even though the ending was sad, the Billie Joe movie did trigger a discussion, on the way home, about how facilitating and enhancing interactions between the menfolk, was how you kept a house open, and how you kept a husband.

"Waayull, if he's doin' THAAYIT, then he ain't gon' git no little snotnose gal pregnundt, an' yo know whurrr thaayit leads..." This came in handy, many years later, while counseling my new peers, once I found myself living in Eastover.

I'm okay with Sid misspelling words when he is not foisting his moral superiority liberalism off as relevant thought.

Wonderful mash-up, 8:15! I wonder, if it got fed to the right AI, could it become a movie?