Bobbie Gentry is an American retired singer-songwriter. She was one of the first female artists in the United States to compose and produce her own material.
real name: Roberta Lee Streeter
labels: Capitol Records
genres: country music
awards: Grammy Award for Best New Artist
plays: guitar, voice
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Gentry was born Roberta Lee Streeter on July 27, 1942, near Woodland in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, to Ruby Lee (née Shipman; November 28, 1920 – April 2, 1989) and Robert Harrison Streeter. When her parents divorced shortly after her birth, her mother moved to California, leaving Gentry to be raised on a farm by her paternal grandparents. She grew up without electricity or plumbing. Her grandmother traded one of the family's milk cows for a neighbor's piano, and at age seven, Gentry composed her first song, "My Dog Sergeant Is a Good Dog". Gentry lived in Greenwood, Mississippi, with her father for a few years and learned to play the guitar and banjo.
Gentry charted 11 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, 10 in Canada, and four singles in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart.
"Ode to Billie Joe" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry released by Capitol Records in July 1967, and later used as the title track of her debut album. Five weeks after its release, the song topped Billboard's Pop singles chart.
It also appeared in the top 10 of the Adult Contemporary and Hot R&B singles charts, and in the top 20 of the Hot Country Songs list.
Singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry was born in Chickasaw County, Mississippi. After her parents divorced, she continued to live there with her paternal grandparents. At age 13, Gentry moved to California to live with her mother. She graduated from high school and entered UCLA as a philosophy major, before transferring to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. After she met Jody Reynolds at one of his concerts, Gentry took part in a recording session with him to sing two duets. Singer-songwriter Jim Ford introduced Gentry to record companies and music publishers. Ford took Gentry to Del-Fi Records, where he presented "Ode to Billie Joe" to the label's A&R man Barry White. Ford claimed credit for writing the song, telling White he had brought...
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 the most common theories of the time were an aborted baby, a wedding ring, a...
The single "Mississippi Delta"-"Ode to Billie Joe" was released in July 1967. Paris was given a co-producer credit on the single with Gordon. Five weeks after its release, it reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the sixth week, the single had sold one million copies. It also appeared at number 7 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, at number 8 on the Hot R&B singles chart, and number 17 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Billboard's year-end chart placed the song at number 3, while Canada's RPM placed it at number 16.
The staff of Billboard welcomed the release as "fascinating material and performance" with a "potent lyric content that is worth the unusual length of the disk". The Los Angeles Times critic Leonard Feather considered it an "aural parallel" to the film In the Heat of the Night (1967), deeming them both "sardonic, knife-edge studies of human nature". Feather concluded Gentry added "a durable new dimension" to American "contemporary folklore". The New York Times commented on the success of the song four weeks after its release. Critic John S. Wilson felt the song was "a most unlikely candidate for success," as it was "long by radio programming standards" and he considered the topic "nothing startling, nothing strange, nothing particularly...