Ode To Billie Joe lyrics

Artist  : Bobbie Gentry 
Song : Ode To Billie Joe
 


Ode To Billie Joe

-Artist: Bobbie
Gentry
-peak Billboard position # 1 for 4
weeks in 1967
-Words and Music by Bobbie
Gentry


It was the third of June,
another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out
choppin' cotton and my brother was balin'
hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked
back to the house to eat
And Mama hollered out
the back door "y'all remember to wipe your
feet"
And then she said "I got some news this
mornin' from Choctaw Ridge"
"Today Billy Joe
MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie
Bridge"

'n' Papa said to Mama as he passed
around the blackeyed peas
"Well Billy Joe
never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits,
please"
"There's five more acres in the lower
forty I've got to plow"
'n' Mama said it was
shame about Billy Joe, anyhow
Seems like
nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw
Ridge
And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped
off the Tallahatchie Bridge

'n' Brother
said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie
Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll
County picture show
And wasn't I talkin' to
him after church last Sunday night?
"I'll have
another piece-a apple pie, you know it don't seem
right"
"I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on
Choctaw Ridge"
"And now ya tell me Billie
Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie
Bridge"

'n' Mama said to me "Child, what's
happened to your appetite?"
"I've been cookin'
all morning and you haven't touched a single
bite"
"That nice young preacher, Brother
Taylor, dropped by today"
"Said he'd be
pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the
way"
"He said he saw a girl that looked a lot
like you up on Choctaw Ridge"
"And she and
Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the
Tallahatchie Bridge"

A year has come 'n'
gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy
Joe
'n' Brother married Becky Thompson, they
bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus
going 'round, Papa caught it and he died last
Spring
And now Mama doesn't seem to wanna do
much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time
pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
And drop
them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie
Bridge


Transcribed by Robin Hood