Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. In 1967, folk-country singer Bobbie Gentry became famous for her song “Ode to Billie Joe.” The unlikely hit about a young man’s ...

Born Roberta Lee Streeter in 1942, Chickasaw County, Mississippi, Bobbie Gentry never harbored any singing aspirations. Although she would make history as one of the first female artists in the U.S.