The Golden Classics of Bobbie Gentry

Product Description:
Bobbie Gentry was the first country singer to win the Best New Artist Grammy Award. She won two more 1967 awards for her huge hit "Ode to Billie Joe." The mystery still remains. Why did Billie Joe McCallister jump off the Tallahatchie bridge? Listen to this fine collection of Gentry's greatest and try to figure it out.

The Golden Classics of Bobbie Gentry,Bobbie Gentry,Collectables,Country,Country-Pop,Nashville Sound/Countrypolitan,Pop,Popular Music

Average customer rating: Golden, Classic Bobbie Review of Bobbie Gentry Shipping Nightmare An Excellent Collection From One of Music's Most Under-Rated, Most Mysterious Women ODE TO BOBBIE GENTRY

The Golden Classics of Bobbie Gentry Bobbie Gentry Manufacturer: Collectables ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Country | Styles | Music Nashville Sound | Traditional Country | Country | Styles | Music General | Pop | Styles | Music General | Rock | Styles | Music General | Country | Indie Music | Stores | Music General | Pop | Indie Music | Stores | Music Similar Items: Harper Valley PTA: The Very Best of Jeannie C. Riley Bobbie Gentry - Greatest Hits Ode to Bobbie Gentry: The Capitol Years Chickasaw County Child: The Artistry of Bobbie Gentry The Very Best of Bobbie Gentry ASIN: B000000940 Release Date: 1998-01-05

Tracks:

1. Mississippi Delta
2. I Saw An Angel Die
3. Chickasaw County Child
4. Sunday Best
5. Niki Hoeky
6. Papa Won't You Let Me Go To Town With You
7. Bugs
8. Hurry Tuesday Child
9. Lazy Willie
10. Ode To Billie Joe
11. Louisiana Man
12. Okolona River Bottom Band
13. He Made A Woman Out Of Me
14. Fancy
15. Apartment 21
16. All I Have To Do Is Dream
17. Let It Be Me
18. Mornin' Glory

Album Description

Bobbie Gentry was the first country singer to win the Best New Artist Grammy Award. She won two more 1967 awards for her huge hit "Ode to Billie Joe." The mystery still remains. Why did Billie Joe McCallister jump off the Tallahatchie bridge? Listen to this fine collection of Gentry's greatest and try to figure it out.

Customer Reviews:

Golden, Classic Bobbie.......2007-04-02

Following the stellar success of 'Ode', the B side of her first single, Bobbie never quite scaled those commercial heights again. At least not in the US -- in Europe, especially Britain, she remained a major star for some years. In fact, the first song of hers I heard, in Britain, was the A side of that debut single, Mississippi Delta, and I have been a devoted fan ever since.

There are several of her compilations currently listed, though not the complete boxed set that she and her fans deserve. This album is the best one to start with. If you like what you hear, you could go on to sample the others, ripping and burning, buying and selling until you have the collection you should have been able to buy in the first place.

This is difficult music to classify, and is all the better for that. There are soulful, bluesy elements, Cajun rhythms and folksy ballads, all imbued with Bobbie's unique voice and style. There is also a rich vein of humor in her songs -- Bugs, which I had not heard before, is hilarious. The rather lush orchestral arrangements, characteristic of the late sixties/early seventies, on some of the tracks, may or may not be to your taste. But her voice - husky, sexy, melodic, always richly emotional - is what matters.

Billy Joe, why did you jump? Bobbie G, where did you go?

Review of Bobbie Gentry.......2006-11-13

The music world is noted for its list of 'one hit wonders.' Lynn Anderson, Teena Marie, and Bobbie Gentry. I was curious as to the number of "Hits' that Ms. Gentry had, so I ordered the album. There was, as I expected, only one.

Shipping Nightmare.......2006-07-19

This is a great CD!!! Hearing "Ode to Billie Joe" and Bobbie's other classics was a great trip down memory lane. However, it took Amazon over 30 days to deliver this item and that was only after numerous emails. There attitude of "just wait a few more days and email us again" was both insulting and annoying. Thank goodness this wasn't a Christmas gift for someone.

An Excellent Collection From One of Music's Most Under-Rated, Most Mysterious Women.......2006-05-13

Born in 1944, Bobbie Gentry spent her Mississippi childhood in grinding poverty before moving to California--and in 1967 she came out of nowhere to knock The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" off the top of the music charts with a simply constructed yet very powerful ballad of love, loss, and mysterious death titled "Ode to Billy Joe."

The fact that the song was such a monster hit was in some ways unfortunate: in terms of commercial success Gentry was never able to top it, and although she released several albums, enjoyed several popular singles, made numerous television appearances, and eventually evolved into a notable Las Vegas headliner, casual listeners regarded her as a "one hit wonder." The truth, however, was quite different. Gentry created a memorable body of work that continues to influence singers and songwriters to this day.

THE GOLDEN CLASSICS doesn't encompass all of Gentry's work, not by a long shot, and it focuses primarily upon her earliest work--but it gives you a very good idea of what she did, and what she did was utterly unexpected. She fused folk, blues, country, and the occasional rock and roll flourish into a personal idiom, and her subject was the joys and sorrows and observations of a poor rural girl's life.

If her style and subjects were unique, so too was her voice, for it was a mix of contradictory elements, raw yet somehow silky, sexy yet oddly detached. Then and now, the result is utterly unique. "Ode To Billy Joe" remains the song for which Gentry is best recalled, but it is only one aspect of her work. She is also quite capable of creating "Bugs," a commentary on the insects that plague the Mississippi delta, both down-home and very sly. The collection is also interesting for its inclusion of Gentry's other major hit single, "Fancy," and a sampling of her duets recorded with Glenn Campbell.

In the late 1970s Gentry walked away from the spotlight, and while most believe she presently resides in Los Angeles she has so effectively disappeared that no one can be quite certain of where she is, much less of what interests she presently pursues. Whatever the case, she was a true original, and while the songs here could use a remaster THE GOLDEN CLASSICS is an excellent point at which to begin an exploration of her work.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

ODE TO BOBBIE GENTRY.......2005-07-16

It was always perfectly obvious to me what Billie Jo McAllister and the narrator of Bobbie Gentry's classic country story-song, "Ode To Billie Jo" threw off the Tallahassee Bridge. It was an aborted fetus, and later, Billie Jo doesn't jump, but is pushed off the Tallahassee Bridge. There is a haunting sense of guilt in Gentry's slow southern drawl as she sings of a lazy summer when dread hung over the dusty delta like a merciless sun. What a great song. It still sounds as inviting and mysterious, alt-country really, as it did when it ruled the AM radio airwaves in 1967. Only one other song on this greatest hits package measures up to the class act of 'Billie Jo', and that is "Fancy", an upcharged, very cool hit record telling the story of a prostitute's rise to fortune, with great Americana folk - just this side of tragi-corny lines like, "Your Pa's run off and I'm real sick and the baby's gonna starve to death." It was a colorless mid-nineties remake hit by Reba McIntyre, but this original is a slick pop masterpiece with a chugga-chugga tamborine and percussion musical break, and some hip street talk as the singer hooks up with 'Sean', who becomes "a congressman and an occasional aristocrat" and buys her a Georgia mansion. "Oklahoma River Bottom Band", a failed 45rpm single, is a delta-bluesy, sluggish Mississippi River ballad with a southern jug band equivalent of Beatles' White Album mystique; Gentry sings in seeming reference to the phenomenal success of 'Billie Jo' - "I told you society, green apple piety, death of variety, Oklahoma river bottom band." Most the other songs on this Collectables CD (18 in all), although strong delta-blues inspired compositions, are buried in an over production of incidental orchestration, and the duets with Glen Campbell, from Capital Records', "Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell", are atrocious, with Gentry unsuccessfully trying to tind a comfortable octave among Campbell's perfect tenor. The CD has a brief bio of Bobbie Gentry, but fails to mention she quit the 'business' in the '70s, and never returned, and remains today a missing oddity, like a sane Syd Barrett of country music.

Music Album:

1. The Gospel Collection
2. The Gospel Spirit [Original recording remastered]
3. The Hardest Part
4. The Kendalls: 16 Greatest Hits [Extra tracks]
5. The Last of the True Believers [Enhanced]
6. The Pilgrim
7. Treasures
8. Two Teardrops
9. Under the Influence
10. When the Roses Bloom Again

Music Album