<Ul> <Li> file </Li> <Li> help </Li> </Ul> <P> "Ode to Billie Joe" is a song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a singer - songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi . The single, released on July 10, 1967, was a number - one hit in the US and a big international seller . Billboard ranked the record as the No. 3 song of the year . It generated eight Grammy nominations, resulting in three wins for Gentry and one for arranger Jimmie Haskell . "Ode to Billie Joe" has since made Rolling Stone's lists of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" and the "100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time" and Pitchfork's "200 Best Songs of the 1960s". </P> <P> The song takes the form of a first - person narrative performed over sparse acoustic accompaniment . It tells of a rural Mississippi family's reaction to the news of the suicide of Billie Joe McAllister, a local boy to whom the daughter (and narrator) is connected . Hearsay around the "Tallahatchie Bridge" forms the narrative and musical hook . The song concludes with the demise of the father and the lingering, singular effects of the two deaths on the family . According to Gentry the song is about indifference and unshared grief . </P> <P> Gentry's song takes the form of first - person narrative by the young daughter of a Mississippi Delta family . It offers fragments of the dinnertime conversation on the day that a local boy, and acquaintance of the narrator, jumped to his death from a nearby bridge, the account interspersed between everyday, polite conversation . The song's final verse conveys the passage of events over the following year . </P>

What is the meaning behind the song ode to billie joe
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