Bobbie Gentry – The Artistry Of

Despite charting a clutch of country and pop hits some three decades ago, as well as hosting her own prime-time TV hour, Bobbie Gentry is remembered, at this remove, as a one-hit wonder. But what a record it was, an evocative 4:13 of southern gothic that, from its gripping narrative to its pregnant string arrangement and prickly guitar licks, tapped the dis-ease of a nation that gathered around the dinner table each night to talk around but never about what was going on in its midst.

Still, and as immortal as that totem of the Vietnam and civil rights eras remains, Gentry’s legacy consists of a whole lot more than just “Ode To Billie Joe”. Among numerous other highlights, there’s her duet version, with Glen Campbell, of Margo Guryan’s touchstone of sunshine pop, “Sunday Morning”, as well as “Fancy”, an expansive fantasy about “getting over,” a subject that’s arguably the most enduring subtext of Gentry’s music.

The entire Fancy LP, produced by Gentry and Rick Hall at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, holds up beautifully 35 years after its release. Much the same is true of Ode To Billie Joe, Gentry’s 1967 debut, an album that, at its best, channeled the voices of Carson McCullers and Eudora Welty for the AM dial.

Indeed, it’s hard to fathom whole swatches of the work of Lucinda Williams, who admits to having worn out several copies of Ode, without those two albums. Or, for that matter, to imagine any number of recordings by Tanya Tucker, Shelby Lynne, Sheryl Crow, Allison Moorer, and Beth Orton. Orton’s latest disc, The Other Side Of Daybreak, even includes a track called “Bobby Gentry” (sic), a pungent, string-steeped homage to the singer (and, one presumes, Jimmie Haskell, Gentry’s frequent arranger).

Gentry’s writing — the artistry alluded to in the set’s title — is the focus of this set, which, besides the aforementioned hits, includes such evocative album tracks as “Casket Vignette”, “Chickasaw County Child” and “The Girl From Cincinnati”. It’s also loaded with the quotidian elisions (“sweet apple pi-e-ty”), cotton-patch colloquialisms (“scuppernongs” and “mud daubers”), and internal rhymes that are the hallmarks of Gentry’s writing.

Much more than words and chords, though, define the artistry of most gifted musicians, and Gentry (nee Roberta Streeter) is no exception. Just as indelible as her songs, if not more so, is the steamy, magnolia-steeped drawl with which she sings them, and the way her recordings otherwise sound. Witness, for example, how she picks at the strings of her guitar as if scratching a scab or chigger bite, or how, in “Fancy”, the drummer’s skittering rimshots flesh out images of cockroaches scurrying across the floor of the shack of the protagonist’s dying mama.

Ultimately, the sharpest impression left by these 23 tracks is that even more than having a singular voice as a songwriter, Gentry, with help from first-call pickers, producers and arrangers, is the maker of great-sounding records. Only one question remains: Where is she now?