Gentry brought that one, along with “Mississippi Delta,” to Capitol Records, which officially signed her on June 23, 1967. “Ode to Billie Joe” is a sparse, half-spoken recounting of the suicide of ...

Bobbie Gentry is one of the great legends of 1960s popular music, an artist who debuted with an enigmatic, enduring smash hit who then cultivated an idiosyncratic country-pop crossover sound for a few ...

Today, Bobbie Gentry is often talked about because of her mysterious disappearance from country music. In late April 1982, at the height of her music career, the star abruptly stepped away from the ...

Music fans know the importance of Friday. “It was the 3rd of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.” That is the opening line of one of music’s most discussed, examined and appreciated songs — “Ode to ...

It was the song no one could escape in summer 1967 — and one that has haunted us ever since as one of pop music’s most beguiling hits. “Ode to Billie Joe,” Bobbie Gentry’s baroque-folk tale about a ...

Bobbie Gentry released “Ode to Billie Joe” backed with “Mississippi Delta” in July 1967. The song, a first-person narrative, sees the narrator’s family react to the news that Billie Joe McAlister ...

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Something funny ...

The tenuous nature of fame means that several artists have walked away from the ACM Awards never to be seen again, but Bobbie Gentry may be the only country singer to have done it so deliberately. On ...

In July of 1967, Capitol Records released “Ode to Billie Joe,” a spooky wisp of a song by an unknown artist named Bobbie Gentry. Industry wisdom said “Ode” was too dark, too long, too different to get ...

Editor's Note: The following column by former Clarion Ledger columnist Billy Watkins originally appeared in the May 31, 2016, edition of the Clarion-Ledger. Music fans know the importance of Friday.

In 1996, Paula Cole‘s second album This Fire made her a household name, thanks in large part to the use of the LP’s “I Don’t Want to Wait” as the theme song for the WB teen-angst drama, Dawson’s Creek ...