Ode to Billie Joe (feat. Lucinda Williams)

It was the third of June

Another sleepy, dusty Delta day

I was out chopping cotton

And my brother was baling hay

And at dinner time, we stopped

And walked back to the house to eat

And Mama hollered out the back door

"Y'all remember to wipe your feet"

Then she said she got some news this morning

From Choctaw Ridge

Today, Billie Joe MacAllister

Jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

Papa said to Mama

As he passed around the black-eyed peas

"Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense

Pass the biscuits, please

There's five more acres in the lower forty I gotta plow"

And mama said it was a shame about Billie Joe anyhow

Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good on Choctaw Ridge

And now Billie Joe MacAllister

Jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

Brother said he recollected when

He and Tom and Billie Joe

Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show

And wasn't I talking to him after church last Sunday night?

I'll have another piece of apple pie

You know, it don't seem right

I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge

And now you tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

And Mama said to me, "Child, what's happened to your appetite?

I've been cooking all morning and you haven't touched a single bite

And that nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today

Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh by the way

Said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge

And she and Billie Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

A year has come and gone since we heard the news about Billie Joe

Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo

There was a virus going 'round, Papa caught it and died last spring

And now Mama doesn't seem to want to do much of anything

And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge

And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge