Artist: Bobbie Gentry
Genre(s):
Rock
Discography:
Ode To Billie Joe
Year: 1967
Tracks: 21
Bobbie Gentry cadaver unitary of the about interesting and underappreciated artists to go forth proscribed of Nashville during the late '60s. Best-known for her crossover blast "Ode to Billie Joe," she was ane of the first-class honours degree female land artists to write and produce much of her possess material, forging an idiosyncratic, pop-inspired effectual that, in tandem with her glamourous, bombshell icon, hoped-for the rise of latter-day superstars like Shania Twain and Faith Hill. Of Portuguese filiation, Gentry was innate Roberta Streeter in Chickasaw County, MS, on July 27, 1944; her parents divorced shortly after her birthing and she was raised in poverty on her grandparents' farm. After her granny traded unitary of the family's milk cows for a neighbor's pianoforte, seven-year-old Bobbie composed her start song, "My Dog Sergeant Is a Good Dog," long time later self-deprecatingly reprised in her cabaret do; at 13, she stirred to Arcadia, CA, to live with her mother, soon first her playacting vocation in local country clubs. The 1952 film Ruby Gentry lent the isaac Bashevis Singer her stage cognomen.
After graduating high schooling, Gentry settled in Las Vegas, where she appeared in the Les Folies Bergère nightspot review; she soon returned to California, perusal philosophy at U.C.L.A. earlier transferring to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. In 1964, she made her recorded debut, cutting a pair of duets -- "Ode to Love" and "Stranger in the Mirror" -- with rockabilly isaac Bashevis Singer Jody Reynolds. Gentry continued playing in clubs in the days to follow earlier an early 1967 recording a demonstration establish its way to Capitol Records producer Kelly Gordon; upon sign language to the label, she issued her debut exclusive, "Mississippi Delta." However, phonograph record jockeys began spinning the B-side, the self-penned "Ode to Billie Joe" -- with its eerily free production and enigmatic story detailing the felo-de-se of Billie Joe McAllister, world Health Organization flings himself off the Tallahatchie Bridge, the individual stricken a chord on land and bug out wireless alike, topping the pop charts for four weeks in August 1967 and selling triplet million copies. Although the follow-up, "I Saw an Angel Die," failed to chart, Gentry still won threesome Grammy awards, including Best New Artist and Best Female Vocal. She was as well named the Academy of Country Music's Best New Female Vocalist.
With her second record album, 1968's The Delta Sweete, Gentry returned to the nation charts with the underage hit "Okolona River Bottom Band." Although her recordings were typically credited to Capitol staff producers, she later maintained she helmed the sessions herself and also wrote a lot of her own material, drawing on her Mississippi roots to compose revealing vignettes that typically explored the lifestyles, values, and even hypocrisies of the southern culture. Favoring more soulful and rootsy arrangements over the lush countrypolitan stylus in vogue in Nashville at the time, Gentry's records sound rather unlike anything on either the land or crop up charts at the time and her smoky, sensuous voice adapted easily to a variety of musical contexts. But to many listeners, she remained a one-hit wonder and her first-class third base album, 1968's Local Gentry, received little notice. That same yr, Gentry issued a duad record album with Glen Campbell, returning to the country Top 20 with "Let It Be Me"; the duo regularly collaborated throughout the seventies, grading their biggest murder with a reading of "All I Really Want to Do."
In 1969, Gentry reached her creative zenith with Disturb 'Em With Love -- though cut in Nashville, the record owed far more to the game R&B sounds emanating crossways the province in Memphis and generated her number 1 U.K. number one, a smouldering rendition of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David perennial "I'll Never Fall in Love Again." The single's success besides earned Gentry her possess fugacious BBC television variety series. However, as her headliner lessened stateside, she became a regular of the Las Vegas electric circuit, mounting an elaborate night club revue that she not only headlined just also wrote and produced, even overseeing the stage dancing and costuming. Gentry's 1969 man and wife to Desert Inn Hotel handler Bill Harrah ended later on only trey months, just the following year she returned to the county and pop Top 40 with the form of address cut from her fifth album Fancy. In 1971, she issued her net Capitol sweat, Patchwork, in the first place close her acting to her nightclub act for the succeeding several years. A CBS summer substitution series, The Bobbie Gentry Happiness Hour, aired for quaternion episodes in 1974; Gentry side by side surfaced on the grownup screen, credited as co-writer for a 1976 film adaptation of Ode to Billie Joe. After a second marriage, to associate singer/songwriter Jim Stafford, ended in 1979 later on only 11 months, Gentry step by step receded from world view, reticent from acting and finally settling in Los Angeles.
