Ode to Billy Jo

You're No Good - Ike & Tina Turner

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

And then she said

I got some news this morning from Choctaw Ridge

Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

N Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas

Well Billy Joe never had a lick of sense

Pass the biscuits please

There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow

Mama said it was shame about Billy Joe anyhow

Seems like nothing ever comes to no good

Up on Choctaw Ridge and now

Billy Joe MacAllister's 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 me after church last Sunday night

I'll have another piece-a apple pie

You know it don't seem right

I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge

And now ya tell me Billie Joe's jumped

Off the Tallahatchie Bridge

N 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

That nice young preacher Brother Taylor

Dropped by today said

He'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday

Oh by the way

And he said he saw a girl that looked

A lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge

And she and Billy Joe was throwing something

Off the Tallahatchie Bridge

A year has come gone now

Since we heard the news about Billy Joe

Non Brother married Becky Thompson

They bought a store in Tupelo

There was a virus going round

Papa caught it and he died last Spring

And Mama doesn't seem to wanna

Do much of anything

And me I spend a lot of time

Picking flowers up on Choctaw Ridge

And drop them into the muddy water

Off the Tallahatchie Bridge