One week after "Ode to Billie Joe" concluded its four-week reign at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, Gentry returned home to the South.

Gentry wrote eight of the album's 12 tracks, which detail her Mississippi childhood and includes vignettes of home and church life ("Reunion" and "Sermon"), as well as recollections of blues and country hits she heard as a youngster ("Big Boss Man" and "Tobacco Road").

The song "Okolona River Bottom Band", accented by a sophisticated horn chart and breathy strings, used the same basic cadence as "Ode to Billie Joe".

The album opens with "Okolona River Bottom Band", a swampy southern groove featuring an intricate horn arrangement from Jimmie Haskell and Shorty Rogers.

Gentry infuses the song with a little innuendo as she tells the audience with a small laugh, about finding her own boss "that's gonna treat me right".

[8] Track three, "Reunion", featuring Ramblin' Jack Elliott, is another Gentry original which paints the picture of a family bickering around the dinner table.

[8] Side one closes with "Sermon", an idiosyncratic take on the traditional gospel tune "Run On", making it seem menacing and perversely joyous at the same time.

[8] The second half of the album begins with a cover of the bittersweet "Tobacco Road", performed in a cinematic style featuring a Mariachi band sound and strings.

They felt that Gentry's songwriting on the album showed her as "an effective ballad writer as well as a skillful portrayer of the life of the Mississippi Delta country.

Writing for The Guardian in 2013, writer Dorian Lynskey called the album "a lost masterpiece," noting that "although Capitol's in-house producer Kelly Gordon stamped his name on the credits, most of The Delta Sweete's innovative, sophisticated sound is down to Gentry herself, who played piano, guitar, banjo, bass and vibes.

Lynskey called Gentry "a fabulously mercurial singer and lyricist," and stated that "she probably doesn't worry about The Delta Sweete not getting its due as a masterpiece.

She recorded this album as she was in the process of becoming an enormous star, but it doesn’t feel indulgent... Few artists have had such an outsize effect on the shape of “Americana” music in such a short period of time, and few have paid so little heed to the restrictions of that lineage.

"[15] In 2019, Mercury Rev released Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited, featuring guest performances by Norah Jones, Hope Sandoval, Phoebe Bridgers and Marissa Nadler among others.

Lucinda Williams contributed a cover of "Ode to Billie Joe", the only song featured on the album that did not originate from The Delta Sweete.

The album was reissued in the UK in 1972 by EMI's budget label mfp, under the title Way Down South, featuring the original track listing and new cover art.

The deluxe edition will include 10 bonus tracks, featuring the previously unreleased demo "The Way I Do" and an instrumental version of "Okolona River Bottom Band".