Born Roberta Lee Streeter in Chickasaw County and spending her childhood there, Bobbie Gentry drew on the accents, sounds, images, flavors, and rhythms of Delta life in the songs she wrote and records she made, becoming one of the most influential country and pop artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Although she later gave her birth year as 1944, she was born as Bobby Lee Streeter on her family’s farm near Woodland on July 27, 1942, was raised in poverty by her Streeter grandparents after her parents divorced, and later attended school in Greenwood, where her father lived. Attracted from childhood to blues, country, and especially gospel music, she taught herself piano by watching a church choir pianist and was writing songs by age seven. At thirteen she moved to California to live with her mother, taught herself guitar, banjo, and bass, and took the stage name Bobbie Gentry from the film Ruby Gentry. After performing in local clubs in Palm Springs, briefly working as a chorus dancer in Las Vegas, graduating from high school, studying philosophy at UCLA, and studying music theory at The Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, she recorded and cowrote songs with Jody Reynolds in 1963. Capitol Records signed her in 1967 after hearing her demo tape of original songs; although “Mississippi Delta” had been intended as the first single, disk jockeys favored “Ode to Billie Joe,” which sold three million copies, reached the Top Twenty in country, and helped the album of the same name top both country and pop charts. A few months later she hosted the first Country Music Association Awards ceremony. Her albums The Delta Sweete and Local Gentry in 1968 and Fancy and Patchwork in 1970 presented original southern gothic ballads and lush pop settings of her own devising but achieved only marginal success. She returned to the Top Twenty in country and pop with duet versions of “Let It Be Me” in 1968 and “All I Have To Do Is Dream” in 1969, recorded with Glen Campbell. Already a frequent television variety show performer, she also had pop success in England with “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” starred in her own series there in 1969 and in a U.S. series in the summer of 1974, re-recorded her best-known song in 1976 for the Robby Benson film Ode to Billy Joe inspired by it, married Bill Harrah and later Jim Stafford, had a son, and retired from performing and public life in 1982.
