Was the Third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta Day

She certainly paints out a story with lyrics. I can picture everyone in the song.

Pass the biscuits please.

Gentry's unannounced retirement in 1982, and subsequent disappearance from public life has always been a mystery. She has given no public interviews and has rarely been photographed. Would be interesting to have a sitdown with Ms. Gentry.

Tony Joe White said he identified with Billy Joe and was inspired to write Polk Salad Annie after hearing it. It defined his writing style after that.

He tried to get Bobbie to write and perform with him, but she did not. I bet they could have had some great collaborations.

I wonder why that inspired him to write that particular song.
---

It was 1967 and Tony Joe White was working the Texas blues clubs when Bobbie Gentry's Southern country-soul psycho-drama Ode to Billie Joe came on the radio and blew his mind.

"I had a pretty good imitation of Elvis at the time - the sideburns and everything," the Louisiana-born singer-songwriter recollects in his grizzly, deep-South voice.

"Then I heard Ode to Billie Joe and it was like going back to your mom's house for dinner. I went, 'Oh god, I am Billie Joe. I know the Tallahatchie Bridge, and pass the black-eyed peas and the cornbread.' If I ever start writing, I will write what I know."

It was a prophetic decision. A month later, White wrote Polk Salad Annie and Rainy Night in Georgia, the first of a string of hits that would be recorded by Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Ray Charles and scores of others.

To create Polk Salad Annie and her dysfunctional family, White drew on real life. "There were four girls around the river who'd remind you of her," he chuckles.

His own upbringing on a cotton farm in Goodwill, Louisiana, provided plenty of local folklore for the evocative Southern story-songs White has spent his life crafting.
--

I sat with his family for a concert in Lafayette. His neice said his dad always wanted to know who he was writing about.

I referenced Billie Joe McAllister in a convo with my son and he had no idea who/what I was talking about. I sent him a link, which he ignored. Kids these days!