Bobbie Gentry

Among the towering figures in 1960s popular music, Bobbie Gentry stands out for launching her career with a cryptic blockbuster single, then shaping an offbeat country-pop hybrid over the next several years before withdrawing completely from public attention. That breakthrough arrived with “Ode to Billie Joe,” the lean, supple narrative that climbed to the top spot upon its 1967 release. So lasting was the song’s grip that it inspired a feature film roughly ten years afterward, long after Gentry’s own run had wound down. No further pop smash followed, though she did migrate toward the country side once her psychedelic-tinged Americana set The Delta Sweete failed to register on either format. For a time in the late ’60s, Glen Campbell paired with her on duets that included covers of the Everly Brothers’ “Let It Be Me” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream”; on her own, she forged a flamboyant marriage of cabaret pop and country-funk whose high point came with the 1969 single “Fancy.” Reba McEntire later transformed “Fancy” into a modern standard, underscoring how thoroughly Gentry had prepared the ground for later singers who moved fluidly between country and mainstream pop.

Born Roberta Streeter on July 27, 1942, in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, to parents of Portuguese ancestry, Gentry saw her family split soon after her arrival and grew up in straitened circumstances on her grandparents’ farm. When her grandmother swapped one of the family’s milk cows for a neighbor’s piano, the seven-year-old Gentry wrote her first song, “My Dog Sergeant Is a Good Dog,” which she would later revive with self-mocking humor during her club shows. At thirteen she relocated to Arcadia, California, to join her mother and began appearing in local country clubs; the 1952 film Ruby Gentry supplied the stage name she adopted.

After finishing high school, Gentry moved to Las Vegas and performed in the Les Folies Bergère revue, then headed back to California to study philosophy at U.C.L.A. before switching to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. Her first recordings appeared in 1964 as two duets with rockabilly artist Jody Reynolds—“Ode to Love” and “Stranger in the Mirror.” She kept working the club circuit until an early-1967 demo reached Capitol Records producer Kelly Gordon. Signed to the label, she released “Mississippi Delta” as her debut single, yet disc jockeys favored the B-side, the self-written “Ode to Billie Joe.” Its stark arrangement and cryptic tale of Billie Joe McAllister’s leap from the Tallahatchie Bridge caught fire on both country and pop stations, holding the pop summit for four weeks in August 1967 and moving three million copies. Although the follow-up “I Saw an Angel Die” made no impression, Gentry collected three Grammy awards, among them Best New Artist and Best Female Vocal, and was also honored by the Academy of Country Music as Best New Female Vocalist.

On her sophomore LP, 1968’s The Delta Sweete, she returned to the country chart with the modest success “Okolona River Bottom Band.” Even though Capitol staff producers were routinely credited, Gentry later asserted that she herself guided the sessions and penned most of the material, mining her Mississippi upbringing for candid vignettes that examined Southern manners, values, and contradictions. Preferring earthy, soul-inflected settings over the polished countrypolitan sound then dominant in Nashville, her work stood apart from prevailing country and pop releases alike, while her dusky, sultry voice slid comfortably across styles. To most listeners, however, she remained a one-hit artist, and her strong third album, 1968’s Local Gentry, drew scant notice. That same year she teamed with Glen Campbell on a duet collection that yielded the country Top 20 entry “Let It Be Me”; the pair continued collaborating into the ’70s and scored their biggest joint success with a version of “All I Really Want to Do.”

Gentry reached an artistic peak in 1969 with Touch ’Em with Love. Although tracked in Nashville, the album drew more from the raw R&B then emanating from Memphis and delivered her first U.K. chart-topper, a smoldering take on the Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” The single’s overseas triumph also secured her a brief BBC variety series. As her domestic profile faded, she became a regular on the Las Vegas circuit, staging an opulent revue that she wrote, produced, choreographed, and costumed herself. In 1970 the title track from her fifth album, Fancy, carried her back into the country and pop Top 40. She closed out her Capitol tenure the following year with Patchwork and thereafter limited her appearances largely to nightclubs. A four-episode CBS summer series, The Bobbie Gentry Happiness Hour, aired in 1974. She resurfaced on screen as co-writer of the 1976 film adaptation of Ode to Billie Joe. Gradually she stepped away from the spotlight altogether, ceased performing, and eventually made her home in Los Angeles.