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According to American Songwriter, Gentry was in a romantic relationship with songwriter Jim Ford. An esteemed lyricist who collaborated with P.J. Proby, The Temptations, and Aretha Franklin, Ford allegedly also had a habit of attempting to claim authorship of other people's songs.
The story goes: While Gentry was pitching her song to Del-Fi Records, Ford told everyone the song was his. “Gentry was only there, he said, because he needed her to sing it,” AS shared. In the end, Del-Fi passed on the song, with Capitol Records scooping it up and releasing it with Gentry credited as songwriter.
A first-person narrative about the suicide of a fictional character named Billie Joe McAllister and its aftermath, the song tells of a local boy from Choctaw Ridge, Mississippi, who mysteriously jumps off the Tallahatchie Bridge. The lyrics then focus on his girlfriend and her family, whose nonchalant, gossipy chitchat at the dinner table fails to account for the impact the death has had on the narrator.
“The song is sort of a study in unconscious cruelty,” Gentry once said, per Performing Songwriter. “But everybody seems more concerned with what was thrown off the bridge than they are with the thoughtlessness of the people expressed in the song. What was thrown off the bridge really isn’t that important.”
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“Anyone who hears the song can think what they want, but the real message of the song, if there must be a message, revolves around the nonchalant way the family talks about the suicide,” Gentry explained. “They sit there eating their peas and apple pie and talking, without even realizing that Billie Joe’s girlfriend is sitting at the table, a member of the family.”
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