Why did Billy Joe jump off the Tallahatchie Bridge....

Bretrick

Bretrick

Well-known Member
Location
Perth Western Australia
What did Billy Joe and his girl throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge?
Will we ever know what was thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge?
What is the gossip here? Was there a scandal?
What is the point made in this song?
Discussing the incident, those around the dinner table were very nonchalant... was jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge a common occurrence?

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Bretrick said:
What was thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge...
What did Billy Joe and his girl throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge?
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Well didn't you just creep me out?! I was thinking about this very thing yesterday... weird.
I've heard some say that she was pregnant and they threw the baby off. Yeah, always ugly rumors with things like this. I also think I remember an interview with Bobbie Gentry saying it was just song lyrics and no one ever knew what it was supposed to have been. What do *you* think, @Bretrick ?
 
Bretrick said:
Why did Billy Joe jump off the Tallahatchie Bridge....
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Because it was there...? Here is what Wikipedia says about it:

In August 1967, Gentry told the Los Angeles Times she wanted to show "people's lack of ability" to empathize with others' "tragedy." She pointed out the mother, who noticed but did not understand her daughter's lack of appetite, while later the daughter is unaware of the similarity of her mother's behavior after the father dies. Gentry explained that both characters had "isolated themselves in their own personal tragedies" and remained unconcerned for the others. The songwriter compared the end product to a play. On the object thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge, she commented that the audience had found more meanings than she had intended. Gentry mentioned that theories of the time included a baby, a wedding ring and flowers. While she indicated that what happened at the bridge was the motivation behind Billie Joe's suicide, she also left it open to the listener's interpretation. Gentry said she had no answer and her sole motivation was to show "people's apathy".

In an interview with the Associated Press in November 1967, Gentry called the song "a study in unconscious cruelty." She also said that audiences were still asking her what was thrown off the bridge rather than noticing "the thoughtlessness of people expressed in the song," adding that what had been thrown was unimportant. She said people suggested to her it was a draft card, or a bottle of LSD pills. The songwriter clarified that she knew what it was, but said she considered it irrelevant to the story and deliberately left that interpretation open. Gentry remarked that the song's message revolved around the "nonchalant way" the family discussed the suicide. She also said that what was thrown off of the bridge was included because it established a relationship between Billie Joe and the daughter, providing "a possible motivation for his suicide the next day". The interview ended with Gentry's suggestion that it could have been a wedding ring.[23] Gentry told The New York Times in 1969: "I had my own idea what it was while I was writing it, but it's not that important. Actually it was something symbolic. But I've never told anyone what it was, not even my own dear mother."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Billie_Joe_(song)
 

CallMeKate said:
Well didn't you just creep me out?! I was thinking about this very thing yesterday... weird.
I've heard some say that she was pregnant and they threw the baby off. Yeah, always ugly rumors with things like this. I also think I remember an interview with Bobbie Gentry saying it was just song lyrics and no one ever knew what it was supposed to have been. What do *you* think, @Bretrick ?
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That was the most popular guess back in the day. Did you listen to the song just now? Do and then you get the full creepy effect. :oops:
 
CallMeKate said:
Well didn't you just creep me out?! I was thinking about this very thing yesterday... weird.
I've heard some say that she was pregnant and they threw the baby off. Yeah, always ugly rumors with things like this. I also think I remember an interview with Bobbie Gentry saying it was just song lyrics and no one ever knew what it was supposed to have been. What do *you* think, @Bretrick ?
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No idea. Which is why I ask this question. Someone out there knows.
What is more important...what was thrown off the bridge or why Billy Joe jump off the bridge?
 
I've wondered about this since 1967. My friends back then worried about it too. My best friend's mom said she and Billie Joe were throwing a baby off the Talahatchie Bridge but that's already been discussed - the theory over done.

I like Ms. Gentry's explanation.: the song was more of an expose' of peoples' insensitivity to others. That's what I first felt about the song when I first heard it so maybe I was on the right track even way back then. :unsure:
 
There's actually a movie based on the song, but I remember thinking the movie wasn't the story I imagined. It was years ago I watched it but if I remember correctly he tossed an engagement ring off the bridge because he thought she was cheating on him. After he jumped she started throwing flowers off the bridge. At least I think that's how the plot went.

Of course like all movies there's plenty of creative embellishment.
 
C50 said:
There's actually a movie based on the song, but I remember thinking the movie wasn't the story I imagined. It was years ago I watched it but if I remember correctly he tossed an engagement ring off the bridge because he thought she was cheating on him. After he jumped she started throwing flowers off the bridge. At least I think that's how the plot went.

Of course like all movies there's plenty of creative embellishment.
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That sounds plausible. :)
 
Back in the day, I thought Bobbie Gentry was all that and a cookie too.
I always did and still do like that song. Maybe it's a Southern thing.


iu
 
Sunny said:
That line: "Pass the biscuits, please" in the middle of discussing a tragedy speaks volumes.
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To me it just speaks of a hard working man concentrating on what was ahead of him and not wanting to hear his wife and daughter gossiping.

Naturally said:
Back in the day, I thought Bobbie Gentry was all that and a cookie too.
I always did and still do like that song. Maybe it's a Southern thing.

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She was a good singer and a pretty woman. I think it's both a southern thing and an American thing. Country music was blue collar, real life music back then.
 
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I think it's hard to apply today's thinking to decades old lyrics.

Ode to Billie Joe
Song 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
And 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
And 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
And 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
And 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 and gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe
And 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 want to 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
 
Alligatorob said:
I had always assume Billie Joe was male, but now I don't know. Does the song tell us? :unsure:

Maybe one more of it's mysteries...
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Hmmm, I always thought Billie Joe was female. Let me go Google....

A result:
They seem like arbitrary inventions of the filmmakers, but they're the closest thing the song has to an official “solution”: In the movie, Billy Joe tosses his girlfriend Bobbie Lee's rag doll off the bridge and jumps the following day, tormented by uncertainty over his sexual identity. https://rulefortytwo.com/secret-rock-knowledge/chapter-15/tallahatchee-bridge/
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When things in one's mind are so terrible there is no possible way of dealing with it.....You jump. What it was in the song is whatever you might think of as unbearable. There have been people jump because someone did not return their love. That life ended, whatever the problem was it is no longer a problem for them. I answered the phone on the suicide hotline for several years, there are many ways past emotional trauma but the person on the bridge cannot see them.
I remember a guy calling with a shotgun to his chin and as we talked, he was pretty sure it was the only way. He would not put it down to talk, which is our first rule to continue the conversation. I did ask him for two things, Hang up before you pull the trigger so I do not have to live with that sound in my head forever and go out away from your home so your kids do not find you and your family does not have to scrape your brains off the wall of the garage. I think the worst part of suicide is the ones left behind that wonder why and ask themselves if they could have done something to prevent it.
 
Jondalar7 said:
I did ask him for two things, Hang up before you pull the trigger so I do not have to live with that sound in my head forever and go out away from your home so your kids do not find you and your family does not have to scrape your brains off the wall of the garage.
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o_O Was that to shock him out of doing it.... or do those hotlines
actually give "permission" like that?! This is troubling to me. Maybe
I'm not catching something... if he called a hotline, wouldn't he have
wanted to be HELPED?
 
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Some question : What did the Tallahatchie bridge span? A river? A creek? Was it deep enough to accommodate suicide? Would a jump off it kill the jumper outright? Was Billie Joe suicidal before? How valid is preacher Brother Taylor's comment of seeing a girl like her and Billie Joe up on Choctaw ridge who appeared to be throwing something off the Tallahatchie bridge? Wouldn't this amount to unsubstantiated hearsay not admissible in court? So we really don't know anything for a fact except she spends a lot of time picking flowers on Choctaw ridge and throwing them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie bridge. Agreed? Anything else to add? :unsure:
 
Seems that even though Bobbie Gentry gave permission for the movie, she wasn't real thrilled with what they did with it. I don't blame her... sounds as if they turned a lot of things into what she hadn't intended when writing the lyrics. Max Baer... I didn't know that, but I didn't see the movie. Right now I'm very glad I didn't!
https://cometoverhollywood.com/2014/06/03/from-song-to-screen-ode-to-billy-joe-1976/
 
Chic, I think if the body of water wasn't deep enough to accommodate suicide, there would be no point to the song. It would just be a sad dirge about some young guy jumping off a little bridge into the creek to go swimming. Clearly, there was much more meaning to his jumping off the bridge than that.

The part about the "nice young preacher" has always intrigued me. Was Mama doing a bit of matchmaking? The father obviously didn't approve of Billy Joe, the mother was a peacekeeper, so she was trying to derail the Billy Joe relationship by bringing together her daughter and the preacher.

And of course, there's the question: what did the preacher see being thrown into the water. The mystery of that question makes the whole song very haunting and intriguing.
 

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