I
was
listening to this
song on Graham Norton's radio show the
other day and it occurred to me just how brilliant these lyrics are. Bobby
Gentry does not use
one word too many to
describe the aftermath of a tragic suicide on a narrow minded
community in a small Mississippi backwater.
A
TV movie speculating why Billy Joe Mcallister may have jumped off the Tallahatchie bridge was made in 1976. (One of several movies made
in the 1970's based on classic country songs like 'The Gambler',
'Harper Valley PTA' or 'The Coward of The County'). I haven't seen
the film, but I've read the synopsis. It's an intriguing and
plausible theory, but I won't tell you what it is. You're better off
not knowing.
The song isn't about why Billy Joe killed himself. It's about the fact that nobody but the narrator cares. It's about the burden she carries as her family sit around the table, eating black eyed peas, talking about how 'nothing ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge', while she secretly mourns the death of a friend. It's about the small lives and narrow minds of a dusty delta town in the 1950's and two young misfit's desperate and hopeless desire to leave it all behind.
It is the right combination of narrative, atmosphere and intrigue. It is story telling at its best.
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