This day in 1967, Bobbie Gentry released her only hit: “Ode to Billy Joe.”

The single was a number-one hit in the US within three weeks of release and a big international seller. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 3 song of the year. The recording remained on the Billboard chart for 20 weeks and was the Number 1 song for four weeks.

It generated eight Grammy nominations, resulting in three wins for Gentry and one for arranger Jimmie Haskell. “Ode to Billie Joe” has since made Rolling Stone’s lists of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” and the “100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time” and Pitchfork’s “200 Best Songs of the 1960s”.

The song takes the form of a first-person narrative performed over sparse acoustic accompaniment, though with strings in the background. It tells of a rural Mississippi family’s reaction to the news of the suicide of Billie Joe McAllister, a local boy to whom the daughter (and narrator) is connected. Hearsay around the “Tallahatchie Bridge” forms the narrative and musical hook. The song concludes with the demise of the father and the lingering, singular effects of the two deaths on the family. According to Gentry, the song is about indifference and unshared grief.
“Ode to Billie Joe” was originally intended as the B-side of Gentry’s first single recording, a blues number called “Mississippi Delta”, on Capitol Records. The original recording, with no other musicians backing Gentry’s guitar according to some reports, had eleven verses lasting eight minutes, telling more of Billie Joe’s story. The executives realized that this song would work best as a single, so they cut the length by almost half and added background music, strings, two cellos and four violins, according to Gentry.

The only surviving draft of the seven-minute version of “Ode to Billie Joe”, which consists of two handwritten pages, is located in the archive of the University of Mississippi. Gentry donated the draft to the University’s Faulkner room in 1973. In addition to the iconic lyrics that made the final cut, the unused lyrics may showcase Bobbie Gentry’s mindset and possible answer to mystery of what was thrown from the bridge; as well as the relationship of the narrator to Billie Joe. The shorter version left more of the story to the listener’s imagination, and made the single more suitable for radio airplay. In an interview with Bob Harris broadcast by BBC Radio 2 in Bob Harris Country on April 16, 2009, singer Rachel Harrington claimed that Gentry originally wrote 11 verses, but deleted six because a record producer thought the song was too long. The song is noted for its long descending scale by the strings at the conclusion, suggesting the flowers falling after being dropped off the Tallahatchie Bridge and ending up in the river water below.

In a later interview Gentry took full credit for the success of the record. “Did you know that I took “Ode to Billie Joe” to Capitol, sold it, and produced the album myself? It wasn’t easy. It’s difficult when a woman is attractive; beauty is supposed to negate intelligence – which is ridiculous. Certainly there are no women executives and producers to speak of in the record business.”

The song’s popularity proved so enduring that in 1976, nine years after its release, Warner Bros. commissioned author Herman Raucher to expand and adapt the story as a novel and screenplay, Ode to Billy Joe. The poster’s tagline, which treats the film as being based on a true story and gives a date of death for Billy (June 3, 1953), led many to believe that the song was based on actual events. The film was released in 1976, directed and produced by Max Baer, Jr, and starring Robby Benson and Glynnis O’Connor. Only the first, second, and fifth verses were sung by Bobbie Gentry in the film, omitting the third and fourth verses.

Soon after the song’s chart success, the Tallahatchie Bridge was visited by more individuals who wanted to jump off it. Since the bridge height was only 20 feet, death was unlikely. To curb the trend, the Leflore County Board enacted a law fining jumpers $100

This day in 2000: The felony charges filed against Tim McGraw in connection with the infamous “horse incident” in Buffalo were dropped. Since he and Kenny Chesney still faced a variety of misdemeanor charges, the case eventually went to trial and the pair was completely exonerated.

On June 3, 2000, Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw were headlining a show together in Buffalo, N.Y. It was business as usual, but the two friends would wind up in jail before the day was over. An incident with a horse led to charges of assaulting a sheriff’s deputy.

According to news reports from the time, Chesney asked the daughter of a sheriff’s deputy if he could ride his horse. He then rode away, ignoring orders to stop. Two officers tried to remove him, and McGraw and his manager got involved. A minor scrum broke out and the lawmen suffered minor injuries.

Erie County Sheriff Patrick Gallivan said: “But because they had sustained the injuries, the law in New York State says assaulting a police officer is a felony, regardless of the extent of the injuries — from a minor bruise to lacerations and broken bones.”

The country music icons were arrested, arraigned and released on bail. A year later, all three men were found innocent of any wrongdoing. McGraw and his manager faced up to a year in jail, while Chesney was ultimately charged only with disorderly conduct.

McGraw and Chesney later toured together on the Brothers of the Sun tour in 2012 without incident.

Today in 1981: Kix Brooks married his wife, Barbara.

As the story goes, Kix overslept and barely arrived to his Nashville wedding on time. Barbara met her husband in Maine in 1979, before he was pursuing a musical career.

“I’m from Boston, but I moved to Maine after college and had a fabric store there,” Barbara Brooks recalls. “Kix was there, having left his native Louisiana to help his sister and brother-in-law at their fledgling ad agency.”

Even though Kix Brooks left Maine the following year to follow his musical dreams, their relationship survived the long distance, and Barbara Brooks moved to Nashville a year later. They married in 1981, but it would be a while before Brooks & Dunn really made it big; in the beginning, Brooks was known as a songwriter — before Brooks & Dunn’s hits “Brand New Man” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” hit the airwaves in the early ’90s.

The couple are still happily married, 38 years later.

This day in 1964: Country Music Hall of Fame member, Jim Reeves, died when his single-engine Beechcraft plane crashed near Nashville, Tennessee.

Reeves and his business partner and manager Dean Manuel was flying on their way to Nashville. They were riding on a single-engine aircraft, and the country singer is at the controls. The two came from Batesville, Arkansas, where they secured a deal on some real estate.

When they were flying over Brentwood, Tennessee, they were caught in a violent storm. It was an unexpected incident that caused Reeves to suffer from spatial disorientation, which is the pilot’s inability to determine his body position in space.

According to forensic evidence, Reeves relied on his instincts more than his training during the thunderstorm encounter. He turned left attempting to follow Franklin Road. This caused them to fly further into the rain. Having been too focused on establishing his ground references, Reeves let his airspeed get too low and stalled the aircraft.

Official investigation recorded that Reeves ran into the heavy rain at 4:52 p.m. and crashed only a minute later. The wreckage was found 42 hours later. The plane’s parts were buried in the ground due to the crash’s impact. Ernest Tubb and Marty Robbins were among those who joined the search operation. After their death was formally announced in public, thousands of supporters traveled to pay their last respects at the country star’s funeral.

This day in 1955, Johnny Cash records his first version of “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Luther Played The Boogie” and “So Doggone Lonesome” at the Sun Recording Studio in Memphis.

Folsom Prison Blues, made the country Top 5, and “I Walk the Line” became No. 1 on the country charts, also making it into the pop charts Top 20. In 1957, Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album.