Tara Murtha's ode to Bobbie Gentry

Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe"

By Tara Murtha

Bloomsbury Academic. 160 pages. $14.95

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Reviewed by Helen W. Mallon

Country/pop music legend Bobbie Gentry was a mystery from the beginning. How big a mystery became clear only in light of her self-erasure from public view. One day, the unknown raven-haired beauty walked into Capitol Records with an almost fully produced demo of "Ode to Billie Joe" in her hand.

Or did she?

Gentry was a talented and driven songwriter, but her original vision wasn't to become an international star.

Or was it?

In Bobby Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe," part of the 331/3 book series, Philadelphia writer Tara Murtha enthusiastically examines the Gentry phenomenon and the "kind charade" that characterized both her fame and the Southern culture from which she drew her stage persona.

Apparently, four different people later claimed credit for signing Gentry to Capitol Records. The book presents a welter of information as to who actually produced that demo, but following the particulars will require a dedication beyond the scope of many readers.

"Only one person knows, and she isn't talking" is an understatement that serves as coda to the twists and turns of both Gentry's splashy career and her equally spectacular disappearance. Was her disappearance calculated, or was she just tired? To this day, her whereabouts are unknown.

"It's possible she didn't even plan it," Murtha reports. "She just quietly turned down invitations to perform." Murtha meets former colleagues who still "long to talk with" Gentry, who would now be in her 70s. Some even hope Murtha can help find her.

Murtha never does, but she is thrilled when an unidentified Gentry "intermediary" indicates that the singer enjoyed her letters and actually "contemplated the offer" of an interview. But, as with so many other such requests, "her interest in maintaining privacy won out." Murtha adds, "I comforted myself with the thought: She almost said yes!"

The mystery at the heart of the tune "Ode to Billie Joe" - why he jumped off the Tallahatchee Bridge, and what he and his companion threw off it before his fateful plunge - has spawned many theories, as well as an indie film whose female lead shares Gentry's name. Referring to the emotional disconnection of the family depicted in the song, (after news hits of Billie Joe's suicide, Papa says to Mama: "Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense / Pass the biscuits please"), Murtha cannily links the song to the mystery of Gentry's disappearance. For her, the song "is a comment on how social graces can be wielded like a weapon, imitating intimacy while reinforcing solitude. . . . Bobbie Gentry didn't almost say yes to any of us. The woman just knows how to say no."

Gentry insisted in a 1967 interview that the song's unresolved questions were a literary device: "You have to establish some motivation. . . . What happened the day before [Billie Joe jumped] was the motivation, and I left it open so the listener could draw his own conclusion."

Clearly, she is one smart woman. And while Murtha's exploration of the Gentry myth is fascinating, the writer also takes pains to ensure that the myth - as well as Gentry's sexual aura - will not eclipse her real achievements. Her overnight success, and her tear-up-the-strip Las Vegas shows, prompted cynicism from male critics, who had trouble reconciling a fine intelligence with her "swamp nympho" stage presence.

In fact, Gentry changed country music, infusing it with existential, dark-Gothic depth. A handwritten draft of "Ode to Billie Joe" is held at the University of Mississippi "alongside works by William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams." Gentry is also an astute businesswoman unafraid to "boss up" to what her male choreographer described as "plain old sexism and double standards."

Regarding her Las Vegas career, Murtha writes: "She always negotiated her own deals, even though it was unusual at the time for a celebrity to do it . . . and it was almost unheard of for a woman."

Even as she built her career, Gentry laid the foundation for her own exit.

"In Vegas," Murtha writes, "Gentry explored the paradox of the boundaries of manufacturing authenticity." Perhaps, Murtha suggests, she decided that no authenticity was available outside a fully private life.

Delta Sweet, her second LP, didn't do nearly as well as the album featuring "Ode to Billie Joe," but Gentry didn't care.

"I'm a writer with a writer's integrity, and I didn't want to follow up with parodies."

Murtha's gem of a book is, above all, a testament to the enduring complexity of Bobbie Gentry.