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Laddar... Bobbie Gentry's Ode to Billie Joe (33 1/3)av Tara Murtha
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Ingår i serien33 1/3 (102)
July, 1967: It seems the entire country stopped to listen to a husky voice steeped in the simmering secrets of the South tell a tragic tale of teenage suicide. So much for the Summer of Love. "Ode to Billie Joe" knocked the Beatles' "All You Need is Love" off the top of the charts, and Bobbie Gentry became an international star. Almost 50 years later, Gentry is as enigmatic and captivating as her signature song. Of course, fans still want to know why Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. They also wonder: Why did Bobbie Gentry, who has not performed or made a public appearance since the early 1980s, leave it all behind? Through extensive interviews and unprecedented access to career memorabilia, Murtha explores the real-life mysteries ensnarled within the much-disputed origin of Ode to Billie Joe. The result is an investigative pop history that reveals, for the first time, the full breadth of Bobbie Gentry's groundbreaking career-and just may help explain her long silence. Foreword by musician Jill Sobule. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)782.421642092The arts Music Vocal music Secular Forms of vocal music Secular songs General principles and musical forms Song genres Western popular songs Country westernKlassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
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And I read through it in a single 90-minute sitting.
Tara Murtha's approach is clearly investigative, pitching herself as the voice of a generation of listeners taken in by the spell of the song - and by the persona concocted by Bobbie Gentry herself. The book plays out like a mystery as Murtha sorts her way through Gentry's short career, noting performance styles, conflicting anecdotes from colleagues, and the constant heavy, sticky, Southern Gothic haze through which the Gentry mystique can only be seen. If this sounds like a textual translation of the "Ode" song's uneasy languor...well, that's exactly how it comes across. The more I read, the more I wondered if Murtha, introduction-writer Jill Sobule, and numerous other participants even like the song, or Gentry, that much - or if, in fact, it's a lot more complicated than that. They're in awe. They're inspired. They're shocked. They're a little bit uncomprehending, too. It's as if they heard something they didn't quite understand when they were very, very young, and it's been haunting them ever since. Perhaps "Ode to Billie Joe" haunts anyone who's really stopped to listen to it carefully.
The book is nominally about the album, and more expansively about Gentry's career as a whole, but Murtha keeps coming back to that damn song. Like "Picnic at Hanging Rock," the equally uncomfortable novel that came out the same year of 1967, "Ode" is less about the disappearance of the central character than the effect their departure has on others. It's catastrophic, even under the veil of stoicism, and it wounds. Here, Murtha finds a longer, deeper scar created by Bobbie Gentry herself. She didn't jump off a bridge, but she's gone - never, it seems, to return - and everyone touched by her, in whatever small way, has come out irreparably changed. ( )