What really happened to Billy Joe Mccallister?

It's Tallahatchee -- and it's only a song. According to the movie, he was gay and living in a redneck town. Or not.

Here's what Bobbie Gentry says:

Mystery craze

The mysteries surrounding the characters in the story created a cultural sensation. In 1975, Gentry told author Herman Raucher that she hadn't come up with a reason for Billie Joe's suicide when she wrote the song. She has stated in numerous interviews over the years that the focus of the song was not the suicide itself, but rather the matter-of-fact way that the narrator's family was discussing the tragedy over dinner, unaware that Billie Joe had been her boyfriend ("Then Papa said to Mama as he passed around the black-eyed peas,/'Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense. Pass the biscuits, please./There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow....'"). "Ode" was so popular in 1967 that Frank Sinatra, who loved it, asked jazz great Ella Fitzgerald to sing a few verses for his TV special. The recording of "Ode to Billie Joe" generated eight Grammy nominations, including four wins. A popular speculation at the release of the song in 1967 was that the narrator and Billie Joe threw their baby (either stillborn or aborted) off the bridge, and Billie Joe then killed himself out of grief and guilt. This version of events is made clear on the Sinead O'Connor version, where a baby is heard to cry at the moment the mystery item is thrown off the bridge. There was also speculation that Billie Joe was a black man, having a forbidden affair with the white narrator.

I think it is obvious, IF you actually LISTEN to the song you would realize that Billy Joe and the girl were a couple and the reason Billy Joe committed suicide has EVERYTHING to do with what the two of them were throwing off the bridge. In my opinion it was a baby, whether it was a stillborn or what ever, that is up for discussion but that is what Billy Joe couldn't live with and that is why the girl had no appetite and continued to pick flowers and throw them into the water below the bridge even a year later, it was for her and Billy's child and not just for Billy. Now of course Bobby Gentry would never say that in an interview especially in the late 60s or early 70s, it is far too dark a topic for those times or for that matter these times but if you listen to the song again, it makes perfect sense.

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RE:

What really happened to Billy Joe Mccallister?

And did he really jump off of the Talahatchi bridge?

Does it really matter? It's a fictional character!

I am not a country music fan, but I love this song. Bobbie Gentry had such a great, bluesy, soulful voice on it. I have played this song numerous times on saxophone, using her phrasing and style. It's a great song!

I think it was a doll or maybe a fetus. I live in a town in Mississippi with a river called Tallahatchie . Bobbie Gentry wrote the song and she is still living. K2

Dunno. I saw an interview years ago with Jim Stafford ("Spiders and Snakes"). He said when he was married to Bobbie Gentry, he asked her what happened to Billy Joe, but she wouldn't tell him.