Pop Singers: Bobbie’s Billie’s Bundle

A flower? A ring? A baby? The big summer mystery, the question that resounds from Boston to the Bayou is: What did Billie Joe McAllister throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge?

Singer Bobbie Gentry, 23, may know the answer, but she isn’t telling. Instead, the slim Mississippi farm girl is basking in the news that her Ode to Billie Joe, which she cut for Capitol Records on July 10, has passed the million-sales mark, and that her first LP album (including Billie Joe and eight other songs written and sung by her) has an initial run of 500,000 copies.

Billie Joe, says Bobbie, is a ballad based on her recollection of life around

Greenwood, Miss. A family at the dinner table talks casually of how young Billie has that day jumped off the bridge and how before he jumped he and a girl were seen throwing something into the river. The narrator is probably Billie’s girl friend. The song, says Bobbie, is a study of the innocent cruelty in the way folks can deal with personal tragedy in the most matter-of-fact terms.

Languorous Narrative. The pop-music industry, always alert for new categories, sees in Billie Joe a lot more than that. There is talk of a new division of the already thin-sliced rock-‘n’-roll world; the song, says a rock connoisseur, is the world’s first example of “folk-rock narrative.” It is also the only one; the other songs in the album are straightforward, pleasant folk ballads.

Under that layer is the work of an attractively gifted singer, her husky, throbbing contralto giving off a languor that occasionally approaches drowsiness, her guitar unexceptional but sufficient. Though a newcomer to solo circles, Bobbie is clearly a pro. Her first song, composed at the age of seven, was picked out on the family’s upright piano, and had to do with her English shepherd, Sergeant. Later came studies at the Los Angeles Conservatory and U.C.L.A., but not for long. Since the age of 17, Bobbie has supported herself in assorted musical jobs, working up by the end of last year to a $450-a-week Las Vegas nightclub stint.

This spring she took Billie Joe to Capitol, where despite its length (four minutes-plus; most pop tunes run close to three), it caught the sharp ears of Star-maker-Producer Kelly Gordon. The result: three major TV bookings this fall so far. A further result: millions of puzzled Americans coast to coast, ready to start dragging the Tallahatchie.