Now, for the first time in more than 40 years, and 37 years since her last performance (1981) – some of the most mysterious and elusive recordings of Bobbie Gentry are being released to the public. A former Chickasaw County pastor,  who stopped by Bobbie Gentry’s grandparents’ home one Sunday afternoon in 1963, was introduced to the 18-year-old singer. No interviews. She certainly didn’t have a support group like Dusty [Springfield].”, It’s difficult when a woman is attractive; beauty is supposed to negate intelligence – which is ridiculous, Swamp rock singer Tony Joe White (Rainy Night in Georgia, Polk Salad Annie) never had any doubts about Bobbie Gentry’s talent – he credits her with turning him into a songwriter: “I hadn’t started writing yet. Bobbie Gentry. Today, computer databases clearly show that perhaps the nation’s most reclusive pop star lives in an 8,000-square-foot house with a great pool not all that far from the old homestead. There’s Jim Ford, an ex-boyfriend who claimed he wrote Ode to Billie Joe, his supposed evidence being that she never wrote another song that was as big (but then, nor did he). I talked, for about 13 seconds, to Bobbie Gentry. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. One of my favorites is from a gentleman named Brett, who didn’t include his hometown but got right to the point: “I was born in 1966. Others were less generous. Gentry later married Jim Stafford, a comedian and a singer. “There’s no one here by that name,” she said, finally. Over time, she became regarded as the J.D. cache 4h 2m It didn’t hurt that she was stylish (all her clothes were her own designs) and very attractive, with piled-up raven hair and saucy brown eyes.

We’ll be a little more specific in a minute. John Cameron was the arranger for her BBC shows: “She was pretty much the alpha female in the group – [producer] Stanley Dorfman’s assistant Kate and choreographer Flick Colby were the only other prominent females in the crew. I am 49 and grew up around the music. The song was an inescapable fug. Certainly there are no women executives and producers to speak of in the record business.” Given that the same is almost true more than four decades on, it’s hardly surprising that Gentry feels she is better off keeping her life private.

Written and sung by an unknown young woman from Mississippi named Bobbie Gentry, it was an eerie, minor-key mystery about an unnamed young woman and her family sitting around a farm dinner table discussing, in elliptical terms, the suicide of Billie Joe McAllister. Over seven years, they did seven new shows, always themed. She walked out on Las Vegas in 1981, not long after she gave birth to her son, Tyler, and just after she began caring for her former partner and first producer, Kelly Gordon, when he became seriously ill. Gordon died shortly afterwards, aged 48. We were rebuilding the lines at a very private gated community in Coastal Georgia. It’s one sentence. An update: I am 99.9 percent sure I know where Bobbie Gentry lives. with this post, location or person. When I spotted Ms. Gentry, I walked over and introduced myself. She had a few minor hits after “Ode,” appeared on early ’70s entertainment shows and then went kapoof in the early 1980s. | Sheila B, a DJ at WFMU in New York, says that Gentry’s “songs and style were difficult to pin down”. There’s a song about a laughing woman burying her fiance (Casket Vignette), a song about a woman trapped in a mansion, suffocated by love (Courtyard), and seductive songs about food and bed (Marigolds and Tangerines, Morning Glory). Gentry’s name at birth, in Mississippi, was Roberta Lee Streeter. It sold tens of millions of copies. So was the painting on the cover of 1971’s Patchwork, this time with Gentry sitting on the stoop of a southern shack, looking out into the distance.
And, yes, it is the same place an article in The Washington Post loosely referred to in a June 2 article — “about a two-hour drive from the Tallahatchie Bridge.”. Looks like privacy was the main draw for this property. Her biographer, Tara Murtha, thinks Bobbie Gentry set out a blueprint for women in pop today. She divorced Harrah, then married and divorced country singer Jim Stafford in the late 1970s. I was listening to the radio one day and I heard Ode to Billie Joe. What Billie Joe and his girlfriend threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge? “I think, to some, it’s an open secret,” says Tara Murtha, author of “Ode to Billie Joe,” a 2015 book that’s by far the most thorough biography of Gentry’s public career. Gentry’s voice was often very close-miked. When reporters reached out through intermediaries, there was never a reply. I live in her area and I've not ever caught sight of her around the area or out shopping or anywhere. At age 14, Gentry … Being born on 27 July 1942, Bobbie Gentry is 78 years old as of today’s date 22nd October 2020. Gentry was born Roberta Lee Streeter on July 27, 1942, near Woodland in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, to Ruby Lee (née Shipman; November 28, 1920 – April 2, 1989) and Robert Harrison Streeter (November 29, 1916 – March 18, 2009). “She apparently didn’t like the music business, went on to other businesses and never missed the spotlight.”. Anonymous @ 2019-08-14 02:33:05 . From Patricia: “Last we heard she was living in the San Fernando Valley — Los Angeles.”, Terri in Savannah said Gentry lives there, or did through 2015.

I live in her area and I've not ever caught sight of her around the area or out shopping or anywhere. She went full Garbo. You couldn’t move. Two emails came from folks born on the the third of June, which is mentioned in the song’s first line. Age, Height, and Weight. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. We selected very masculine guys with good bodies ... they were often shirtless.” Among the more extravagant set pieces they concocted were “a Mardi Gras show with six carnival floats built on golf carts so they could move about the stage” and a 30-minute Sgt Pepper segment “that ended with Bobbie in a star-decorated trapeze flying above the stage for Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”. Home of reclusive singer Bobbie Gentry. I blurted out that Billie Joe McAllister had jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge on my birthday. In it, Murtha cites reports from Savannah papers that a “Bobbie Gentry” lived in the Georgia city in the late 1990s but had since moved. What I heard was thick mud, damp moss, a barely moving river, dead air. I think it’s fantastic.”, • The Girl From Chickasaw County: The Complete Capitol Masters is out now on Universal, Available for everyone, funded by readers. Amid ornate psychedelic pop sounding a little like Strawberry Fields Forever, this tale of suicide, loneliness and familial breakdown was unlike any record I had ever heard. She grew up without electricity or plumbing.

I’m rooting for her.

Among them was Your Number One Fan, a dig at her more crazily devoted supporters that would create a blizzard of social media fury if it were written today. Microsoft has removed the Birds Eye imagery for this map. I thought if I ever write something it’s got to be as real as Ode to Billie Joe. Some mysteries can be solved. A recently released eight-disc box set, The Girl from Chickasaw County, covers the bulk of her recording career: seven albums crammed into a brief period of intense fame between 1967 and 1971. The couple sired together a son called Tyler Gentry Stafford. 71ms. I remember the radio, listening to it, the whole thing – it was like a turn-around, you know?”. A full-featured boxed set will debut on September 21st, 2018 and feature all seven of … Bobbie Gentry's House (Google Maps).

“Shortly after her mother's death, Bobbie was in Carson City, Nevada, visiting her stepfather. The emails have come from all over — Australia and Bangladesh, as well from her childhood stomping grounds of Chickasaw County and Leflore County. A Greenwood resident named Ken wrote that “I, too, wish she were more public” and that he didn’t realize until recently that Gentry was “an international sensation.”, The other, Daniel of Savannah, Georgia, wrote: “I guess it was early to mid-1980s when I met Bobbie. She's best-known for the hit "Ode to Bille Joe" from 1967. Her grandmother traded one of the family's milk cows for a neighbor's piano, an… You can hear her stretching; it sounds as if she could physically stop time. This confused the industry, as did the fact that “she looked like a Greek goddess and she was deeply involved in tasks usually reserved for men. The short answer to one of pop’s great mysteries: Bobbie Gentry lives about a two-hour drive from the site of the Tallahatchie Bridge that made her so famous, in a gated community, in a very nice house that cost about $1.5 million.
It wasn’t too long after that I started on Polk Salad Annie. Although she was finally given a production credit on it (something artists didn’t usually get, even if they had produced or co-produced), the album didn’t sell, despite being her most cohesive set of songs. She never spoke to Gentry but said she had sent letters through intermediaries that were never answered. A lady came out of one home to see how the repairs were going. In an interview yesterday, she said she knew where Gentry now lives but had not printed it. “(Gentry and I) became good friends and she flew us, along with her mother, to Las Vegas many times to spend the weekend and see her shows. In Vegas, Gentry dedicated a spot to Elvis and appeared to dress in tribute to the star: Bradburn recalls her “karate-style bell-bottomed jumpsuit” with its jewelled high collar. I'm glad she was able to retire on her own terms. Though, as a teenager, Gentry had left the south for Palm Springs – where she changed her name from Roberta Lee Streeter, in tribute to the Jennifer Jones movie Ruby Gentry – her songs were almost always set in and around the Chickasaw County of her childhood, a semi-mythical south, with conversational lyrics about people who were quite likely friends and neighbours. “It’s wonderful to stand on your own land, where you plan to live and raise a family,” Stafford is quoted as saying at the time. There was a dead pause of several seconds. It’s difficult when a woman is attractive; beauty is supposed to negate intelligence – which is ridiculous. Could be two. Please log in if you don't want to post If I haven’t responded to your email following the “What happened to singer Bobbie Gentry?” column on June 1, consider this a personal apology and a “thank you” for each one. That can’t. Quite possibly, by 1981 Gentry thought there were other things to do with the rest of her life that would be more satisfying than constantly thinking up new costumes, new routines, new ways of avoiding besotted fans. She's best-known for the hit "Ode to Bille Joe" from 1967. All rights reserved. (Harold Matosian/AP). Homes - Celebrity - Entertainment - Musicians. My number and email address are at the bottom of this story. There’s Bobby Paris, the credited producer on Ode to Billie Joe, who kept photos of Gentry with her face scratched out. He wrote: “Two things struck me about her appearance at once. The place names – Tallahatchee, Carroll County, Choctaw Ridge – were cinematic, the singer’s voice was husky, the string arrangement was minimal and eerie. Patchwork turned out to be her last album to date. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. The song’s iconic success also helped launch one of the most enduring riddles in pop: Whatever happened to Bobbie Gentry? They then went through a divorce in 1980. Swamp rock singer Tony Joe White (Rainy Night in Georgia, Polk Salad Annie) never had any doubts about Bobbie Gentry’s talent – he credits her with turning him into a … Soon she would devote all her time to her Vegas shows and ignore the charts. It’s most often reported that she is living in seclusion in Los Angeles, as if she has morphed into a Southern-fried Norma Desmond holed up in a creepy mansion on Sunset Boulevard. Home of reclusive singer Bobbie Gentry. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. When she was put on the spot, Gentry would say “I just sing southern.” It was the kind of record you could build a whole career around, and she knew it. Her look changed dramatically: “No leather fringes allowed,” recalls her choreographer Donald Bradburn.


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