BOBBIE GENTRY Ode To Billie Joe Book by Tara Murtha

Katia de Peyer $ 17.99
Description July, 1967: It seems the entire country stopped to listen to a husky voice steeped in the simmering secrets of the South tell a tragic tale of teenage suicide. So much for the Summer of Love. “Ode to Billie Joe” knocked the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love” off the top of the charts, and Bobbie Gentry became an international star. Almost 50 years later, Gentry is as enigmatic and captivating as her signature song. Of course, fans still want to know why Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. They also wonder: Why did Bobbie Gentry, who has not performed or made a public appearance since the early 1980s, leave it all behind? Through extensive interviews and unprecedented access to career memorabilia, Murtha explores the real-life mysteries ensnarled within the much-disputed origin of Ode to Billie Joe. The result is an investigative pop history that reveals, for the first time, the full breadth of Bobbie Gentry’s groundbreaking career-and just may help explain her long silence. Foreword by musician Jill Sobule. Share this...FacebookTwitterPinterest
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Contents

1. My Dance, Our Symphony
2. New York
3. 16 Langford Place
4. The Chamber Music Society
5. Musical Roots
6. Horovitz, Milhaud, and Mozart
7. Life in New York
8. Musical Colleagues and Friends
9. Challenges
10. Carnegie Concert Hall and the World of Musicians
11. Porto Vecchio
12. A Music Festival at Sea
13. The Assisi Festa Musica Pro
14. Castello di Duino and a Turning Point
15. The Washington Sinfonia
16. More Musical Colleagues and Collaborations
17. Sweet and Sour
18. Master Teacher, Master Passeur

Acknowledgements
Newspaper, Text and Photographic Credits
Appendix A: Gervase de Peyer, Principal Clarinet
Appendix B: Select Recordings
Appendix C: An Extract from Portraits 1: Gervase de Peyer
Select Bibliography
About the Author

About the Author

Katia de Peyer’s first book Dancing with MySelf, Sensuous Exercises for Body, Mind and Spirit (Nucleus Publications, 1991; La Source Press, 2026) introduced her method of inner-centering through movement, hailed by Diane von Furstenberg as a whole new attitude about exercising. Her second book Enjoy Your Healing Power (La Source Press, 2025) is an intuitive, helpful guide for developing our healing power.  A ballet dancer born in Paris who lived in Spain to further her studies in flamenco, Katia moved to New York in the late sixties to start a successful career as a personal trainer. There she met the virtuoso clarinettist Gervase de Peyer in 1976.  She and Gervase married in 1980 and lived for two decades in the US and then in the UK until Gervase’s death in 2017.  Katia continues her work as a writer and healer in London and New York.

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