"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.

The song takes the form of a first-person narrative performed over sparse acoustic guitar accompaniment with strings in the background.

The song received widespread attention, leaving its audience intrigued as to what the narrator and Billie Joe threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

Gentry later clarified that she intended the song to portray the family's indifference to the suicide in what she deemed "a study in unconscious cruelty," while she remarked the object thrown was not relevant to the message.

"Ode to Billie Joe" was nominated for eight Grammy Awards; Gentry and arranger Jimmie Haskell won three between them.

She graduated from high school and entered UCLA as a philosophy major, before transferring to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music.

[5] Ford took Gentry to Del-Fi Records, where he presented "Ode to Billie Joe" to the label's A&R man Barry White.

Meanwhile, a manuscript of a draft of the song donated by Gentry to the University of Mississippi contained verses that were not included on the final recording.

[12] "Ode to Billie Joe" takes the form of a first-person narrative by the young daughter of a Mississippi Delta family.

It offers fragments of dinnertime conversation on the day that a local boy, an acquaintance of the narrator, jumped to his death from a nearby bridge.

[13] The song begins on June 3 with the narrator, her brother and her father returning from farming chores to the family house for dinner.

[14] After reminding them to wipe their feet, the mother announces she received news from Choctaw Ridge: "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

"[16] Unmoved, the father comments that "Billie Joe never had a lick of sense" before asking for the biscuits and adding "there's five more acres in the lower forty, I've got to plow.

[20] The song became a success because it created listener curiosity, given that Gentry did not mention what was thrown off of the bridge or why Billie Joe committed suicide.

[15] In August 1967, Gentry told the Los Angeles Times she wanted to show "people's lack of ability" to empathize with others' "tragedy."

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".

Gentry showed the journalists a bridge in Money, Mississippi, that featured the characteristics of the one she wrote about as she clarified: "this is what I had in mind" she continued: "The river isn't very deep here, but the current is strong.

[28] Soon after she left Capitol Records, Paris sued Gentry for $100,000 and the label for $300,000 in punitive damages for failing to pay him one fifth of the royalties from the song's sales.

[42] The jury awarded Paris one percent of the total royalties from "Ode to Billie Joe" and "Mississippi Delta", that amounted to $32,277.40 (equivalent to $221,500 in 2023).

[44] 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".

[25] 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".

At the time of the production, she told United Press International that the film would "answer many questions left unanswered by the song.

In the adaptation, the pair throw a rag doll off of the bridge, while a homosexual experience with the owner of the sawmill is established as the reason for Billy Joe's suicide.

White felt that his own life experience resembled that of Billie Joe, as he inhabited a similar place during his childhood and he remarked that the song was "real."

[59] Rolling Stone included "Ode To Billie Joe" at number 419 on its 2003 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.

[65] In August 1967, Margie Singleton released a cover of the song that reached number 40 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles.

[70] A parody by Bob Dylan entitled "Clothes Line Saga", originally recorded in 1967, was released on the 1975 album The Basement Tapes.

It mimicked the conversational style of "Ode to Billie Joe" with lyrics concentrating on routine household chores.

This downtempo version of the song includes a brief sample of a wailing baby after the words "she and Billy Joe was throwing something off the Tallahatchie Bridge."

A 2008 episode of Saturday Night Live parodied the song where Kristen Wiig and host Paul Rudd play a married singer-songwriter couple who perform "Ode to Tracking Number.