What does it sound like?:
Bobbie Gentry has an alluring voice, the kind that sounds great wearing just an over-sized man’s shirt. She is also a classy songwriter, capturing the gritty realism of life in the Southern Delta perfectly. Ode To Billie Joe, the spellbinding tale of a young man’s suicide told through the emotionally conflicted eyes of a family having dinner, was her first and biggest hit. The mystery in her songs only increased when she retired aged thirty-six, forty years ago.
In the sixties, she was a rarity, a woman who wrote, sang and produced her own material. For Capitol, she made six solo albums and one duet with Glenn Campbell. She was so famous, she had her own TV show on the BBC. All her Capitol work is in this eight disc box with over 75 demos and outtakes, including her ‘lost’ jazz album, material from the TV show, a glossy book, eight postcards and a facsimile of the original lyrics to Ode To Billie Joe.
Her origins are in Country but she recorded mainly in Memphis with the musicians who weaved their magic for Aretha and Elvis. She has deep brown eyes but sang blue-eyed Soul before it had been invented. Her debut showcases her husky voice and her tough, earthy songwriting, Ode To Billie Joe judiciously placed at the end. The follow up, The Delta Sweete, is almost as good, starting, as it does, with a wicked cackle on Okolohoma River Bottom Band. She harmonises beautifully with Campbell on their duet album but contributes just one song and the cover choices are weighted towards the popular market. The reviews for 1969’s Touch ‘Em With Love, a flirtation with a Son Of A Preacher Man and Bacharach & David, must have given Dusty Springfield a moment of quiet devastation, released a few months after her own apathetically received In Memphis. Gentry’s final album, Patchwork in 1971, is entirely self-composed, although she did get help for the musical interludes designed to stitch it together as a concept. A switch of labels to Warner Brothers proved fruitless and her recording career ended.
Gentry’s music is at its best when it kicks off its shoes and gets down and dirty with a horn section. The further she moves from her Country-Blues roots and the closer she gets to mainstream populism, the more ordinary she sounds. The numerous outtakes illustrate this point. She is a skilled guitarist. The demos where she sings with a riveting purity, backed only by her simple strumming, are the real revelations of the box, taking her back to her days in front of the hearth, writing and singing songs with her mother. If strings were added to add emotional heft to the polished articles, they were largely unnecessary. The BBC recordings spotlight a poised performer in the live setting, calmly in command of her audience even when singing a comedy song such as Billy The Kid.
The Girl From Chickasaw County is an excellent box set in which the extras and previously unreleased tracks are often more fascinating than the official albums and singles. Even so, you really have to love Bobbie Gentry to shell out £70 when there are excellent 21 track compilations, such as Ode To Bobbie Gentry – The Capitol Years, readily available for a tenth of the price.
What does it all *mean*?
Bobbie Gentry deserves the thorough box set treatment she gets here. Now in her seventies, here’s hoping this helps her retirement fund and that she lives long and well enough to enjoy it.
Goes well with…
Nostalgia for sixties production values and a sense of time passing all too quickly.
Might suit people who like…
Patsy Cline, Dusty Springfield, Shelby Lynne.
Good review of a release that has pricked my interest. However it is possibly more Bobbie than I need.
Which compilation would you recommend as an alternative?
Ode to Bobbie Gentry – The Capitol Years! 😉
I thought about getting the box set but then how often would I play the albums? So I settled for a comp: ‘Southern Gothic: The Definive Collection’ 2xCD, 50 tracks. You can get it for £10 inc. shipping from sellers on Amazon Marketplace. It’s good but there is some saccharine amongst the good stuff.
Billie-Joe McAlister was a man? I have always thought it was about the mother of the jettisoned “package” following over the edge, later, in remorse.
There was a girl seen with Billie Joe throwing something off the bridge. That girl looked very like the narrator who, one year later, wandered around picking flowers to toss into the river in tribute to Billie Joe. Definitely a man.
Blimey, 4 decades shattered.
Not five? It’s a sixties song.
me too
The clue to Billie Joe’s sex is given in the line:
And wasn’t I talkin’ to him after church last Sunday night?
Hurry, Tuesday Child (demo)
Strange how she chose to just drop completely out of sight for all these years.
In 1978, she married for the third and final time and had a son. The marriage only lasted a year. Then, her long term co-producer, Kelly Gordon, developed lung cancer. She took him in and nursed him until he died in 1981. She never got back in the show business saddle again.
I need this in my life if the price ever comes down. Love Bobbie Gentry, but her back catalogue has been served very badly for years. I’m sure there’s plenty of good stuff I haven’t heard beyond the stuff that appears on Best Ofs.
I would kill to have that voice sing me to sleep. I have the odd BG track here and there in the collection, but that could convince me to spend beaucoup $$
Nice review. It’s all available on Spotify, and I have been dipping into it over the last week or two. Some really amazing stuff, especially the first album. Tempted by the full set though …
Nice review – but everyone interested should note that the package comes with a detailed and fabulously nice-looking book. Worth every penny.
Yes. I guess ‘glossy book’ doesn’t really do it justice. You do love love your books, fatima.
Books like this are the difference to Spotify if you want to really dig into an artist’s work. And for example, you learn that the original title on the sheet music was “Ode To Billy (!) Joe”. 🙂
Of course you are right. I’m not much of a reader and I don’t value the books enough. That’s me, though.
This box, eight discs, the fabulous book, postcards and lyric sheet is good value at seventy quid. The demos, themselves, with each album make it worthwhile. I’d be surprised if The Beatles White Album book bumps the value up to £120 for six discs, a DVD, postcards and lyric sheet. I wait with baited breath.
Apropos Carl’s more, um, absolute confirmation of his sex, and the unlikelihood of a girl joining 2 fellas in popping a frog down another woman blouse, this at least gives me credence, as Billie-Jo sounds feminine, whereas Billy Joe sounds masculine.
Interesting. When I say them out loud, both those names sound identical to me. 😃
Nice review Tiggs, but you’ve overlooked a key element that really raises the value of this set, namely the tracks that the record company ditched from the Touch ‘Em With Love sessions.
The book notes the jazz tinged direction that Bobbie was initially taking. Those eight songs, released here for the first time including a very moving, heartfelt God Bless the Child, (a new song to me) the lovely Here’s That Rainy Day and Stormy are fantastic additions.
It’s a shame the record company would only consider the commercial prospects, and so demand more of the same, rather than take a risk and let Bobbie have more control to do what she wanted.
Indeed. I mentioned the lost jazz album, then failed to describe it. You’ve done the job very nicely thank you. It is a valuable addition to her canon.
I recall reading somewhere that she was a canny business person and made sure she retained all her copyrights – this in an era when, apart from Dave Clark and Frank Zappa, none of the blokes were capable of getting that side of their shit together.
I don’t think Zappa owned his own publishing at first. Not until after he was chucked off Verve (along with the Velvet Underground) when MGM, who owned Verve at the time, decided they weren’t going to release any more rock albums on the label.
I think he bought all of the rights to his five Verve albums later, after he’d set up his Straight and Bizarre labels with Herb Cohen.
You’d have to love her a whole lot more to shell out AU$190 at Red Eye records in Sydney. Haven’t checked the dodgers.
This may be of interest to people in this thread. I love Mercury Rev, and that is quite a collection of talent they have assembled for this project.
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/mercury-rev-releasing-bobbie-gentry-tribute-lp-ft-margo-price-phoebe-bridgers-hope-sandoval-more/
Sounds very interesting, I’ll definitely check that out, thanks.