Tomorrow on "the third of June" we remember Bobbie Gentry singing about the "sleepy, dusty Delta day" when "Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." Go listen to her sing it and read her never-satisfactorily-explained lyrics.
As I've noted before, Ode to Billy Joe is Faulkner set to music. If any musician ever did a better job of evoking the life, faith and speech rhythms of the rural South, I haven't heard it.
