Granted, one seemingly needs to be of a certain age to remember and/or care, (and of a certain age where the remembering part becomes more and more of a challenge) but those of us who do know that the 3rd of June is a remarkable day in the history of music. This is the day memorialized by Bobbie Gentry as “the day Billy Joe McCallister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.” This 1967 classic is certainly indelibly written into the American Songbook. So on this day, give it a listen. Two choices, feel free to sing along:
The iconic original by Bobby Gentry that drips of the late 60s.
If anyone comes close to the original, it is Patty Smyth on this version, great background music by Tom Scott & The L.A. Express
Here’s a bit of trivia. Note that in this storytelling, and this is great storytelling, no one at the dinner table, the narrator’s whole family, has a name, just mamma, brother, papa…, yet every other person in the song does have a name.
This song also presents a textbook example of a MacGuffin, an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself — that is, in this instance, the question: Just what did they throw off the Tallahatchie bridge? — that is a pure MacGuffin.
It occurs to me... 