Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 116

Record label: Capitol

Produced: Kelly Gordon

Recorded: Winter 1967

Release date: March 1968

Chart peaks: None (UK) 132 (US)

Personnel: Bobbie Gentry (g, v); Jimmie Haskell and Shorty Rogers (ar); other musicians not known

Track listing: Okolona River Bottom Band (S); Big Boss Man; Reunion; Parchman Farm; Mornin’ Glory; Sermon; Tobacco Road; Penduli Pendulum; Jessye’ Lisabeth; Refractions; Louisiana Man; Courtyard

Running time: 33.44

Current CD: Raven RVCD220 adds Local Gentry album

Further listening: Fancy (1970); Touch Em With Love (1969)

Further reading: www.geocities.com/odetobobbiegentry/

Download: iTunes

‘A perfect set of ivories, coffee-coloured eyes, a warm sensual face … no-one would ever dream of throwing her off a bridge.’ So surmised Gordon Coxhill in his 1969 NME interview with Bobbie Gentry. In the two years since Ode To Billie Joe she’d had little in the way of a hit and journalists were apt to dismiss her as just another pretty face. Born Roberta Streeter in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, Gentry was, in fact, a self-taught musician who’d graduated from the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, writing by day and spending her evenings as a Las Vegas chorus girl where she was discovered by Capitol A&R man Kelly Gordon.

‘Kelly came into my office one night so choked he could hardly talk.’ remembers fellow A&R man David Axelrod. ‘He said, “We’ve got a demo and I know it’s real good.” It was Ode To Billie Joe. I said, “This is terrific, what’s the problem?” He said, “General manager of A&R turned it down.” The guy who owned the song was Larry Shane, one of the biggest independent publishers. I dialled him and said, “What do you want for this?” He said, “Ten thousand dollars.” I said, “Done.” I hung up. Happy. Went over the general manager’s head. Her stuff was too good not to hear.’

Her second album, however, was roundly ignored. A concept album about white southern life in which all intros and outros are underscored by sad strings, each track flowing into the next, The Delta Sweete was a work of great emotional power. It ranged from the fractured Mississippi funk of Okolona River Bottom Band to Courtyard, the sparsely-arranged tale of an imprisoned woman, and her most beautiful, tragic composition.

‘No one bought it but I didn’t lose sleep over it,’ Gentry told NME, ‘I’ve never tried to pre-judge public taste.’

After The Delta Sweete Gentry appears to have had difficulty deciding on a career path. Following a number of saccharine chart hits with Glen Campbell (Let it Be Me, All I Have To Do Is Dream), she returned with the hard country soul of Fancy, recorded with Rick Hall at Muscle Shoals. An astute businesswoman, by 1970 she also owned considerable property in California and had a large financial interest in the Phoenix Suns basketball team. She dropped out of the public eye altogether in 1976.