
The third of June was just “another sleepy, dusty Delta day” for Bobbie Gentry’s family in her biggest hit apart from the news that Gentry’s beau Billie Joe McAllister had jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Gentry’s understated story, which she termed “a study in unconscious cruelty,” made great use of specific and mundane details a lot of them; six or so verses were excised from its original seven-minute running time for radio consumption.
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