It’s been 50 years since the movie Ode to Billy Joe was released. The drama film directed by Max Baer Jr. made its nationwide ...

The musical score was composed by a legendary three-time Oscar winner.

Though her birth name was Roberta Lee Streeter, she was known around the world as Bobbie Gentry. Born in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, and raised in the town of Greenwood, Gentry is most known for ...

That is the opening line of one of music’s most discussed, examined and appreciated songs — “Ode to Billie Joe,” written and performed by Bobbie Gentry, who was born in Mississippi’s Chickasaw County.

It was not the third of June, nor was it another sleepy, dusty, Delta day. It was on another muggy July evening in St. Tammany Parish when my buddies and I first heard Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie ...

Gentry has not given interviews, performed, or appeared publicly since her 1982 appearance at the Academy of Country Music ...

Fifty-six years ago, in the late summer of 1967, we first learned from “Mama” that the nice young preacher, Brother Taylor “said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge. And she ...

This is FRESH AIR. Fifty years ago this month, singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry released this song "Ode To Billie Joe," her enigmatic slice of life in rural Mississippi. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ODE TO ...

Music fans know the importance of Friday. “It was the 3rd of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.” That is the opening line of one of music’s most discussed, examined and appreciated songs — Ode to ...