"PUT ON A STACK OF 45s" - ODE TO BILLIE JOE (CAPITOL, 1967) - BILL AND RICH, THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS GUSH OVER BILL'S CRUSH, BOBBY GENTRY! THE BOYS DEVOTE EACH EPISODE TO A 45 RPM RECORDING OF NOTE, SHINING A LIGHT ON ITS IMPORT.

WHY DID BOBBY GENTRY STOP SINGING?https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/17/bobbie-gentry-trailblazing-queen-of-countryThe 60s star – who didn’t just write her own songs but had her own TV show, made her own clothes and painted her own album art – could count Elvis and, later, Taylor Swift as fans. So why did she retire from public view in 1981?The first time I heard Ode to Billie Joe was on a 1967 Radio 1 special. Amid ornate psychedelic pop sounding a little like Strawberry Fields Forever, this tale of suicide, loneliness and familial breakdown was unlike any record I had ever heard. The place names – Tallahatchee, Carroll County, Choctaw Ridge – were cinematic, the singer’s voice was husky, the string arrangement was minimal and eerie. What I heard was thick mud, damp moss, a barely moving river, dead air. The song was an inescapable fug. You couldn’t move. You had to listen...A recently released eight-disc box set, The Girl from Chickasaw County, covers the bulk of her recording career: seven albums crammed into a brief period of intense fame between 1967 and 1971. Gentry’s stock has risen over the last decade as she been name-checked by country stars such as Nikki Lane and Kacey Musgraves. Taylor Swift has been coy about the subject of her 2012 song The Lucky One, but it is almost certainly Gentry: “They still tell the legend of how you disappeared, how you took the money and your dignity, and got the hell out.” Gentry effectively retired from the studio in 1971, from the stage in 1981 and hasn’t done an interview in 30-odd years. It was an almost impossible disappearing act, the kind many would love to pull off. She seems a very modern figure, a pioneer for women in pop, and her unavailability has only enhanced her mystique.