Ode to Hi-Heel Sneakers.

[Domino]

Always liked the unedited master of Hi-Heel Sneakers recorded on September 11th,1967 with the snippet of Ode To Billie Joe at the beginning.

Ode To Billie Joe ,a song released as a single in July 1967, written & recorded by Bobbie Gentry was a #1 Hit in the United States & Billboard ranked it at #3 for the year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Billie_Joe

It must have been riding high on the charts for it to be on Elvis's mind at this 1967 recording session

..


Hi-Heel Sneakers ,a song written by Robert Higggenbotham and was recorded by recorded by Tommy Tucker in 1963 and by many artists over the year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Heel_Sneakers

The Elvis.

..

Tommy Tucker .

..



Stevie Wonder.

..



Buddy Guy & Junior Wells .

http://www.allmusic.com/album/alone-acoustic-mw0000677150

..



The Rolling Stones.

..



Jimmy Hughes.

..



Faces with Rod Stewart .

..



Jose Feliciano.

..



Paul McCartney.

..



The Bill Mitchell Quintet.

..



The Searchers.

..



Jerry Lee Lewis.

..



Sammy Davis Jr.

..



Billy Lee Riley.

..



The Everly Brothers.

..



Zsa Zsa Gabor?

..



And then there's this very peculiar version by Janis Joplin.

..




etc etc.......

[drjohncarpenter]

Great post. If I may, here are some additional thoughts on this recording.

The 1967 Presley cover showed he was finding himself again, cutting a song with some grit after years of Hollywood soundtrack garbage. And when was the last time RCA put out a strong, tough, single A- and B-side? 1968 started out very strong for Elvis.

Guitar Man b/w High Heel Sneakers, released January 13, 1968.

680113_RCA 9425.jpg

It's also worth noting that even Elvis had a little sitar in his music in the heady year of 1967, as we hear some electric guitar sitar on "High Heel Sneakers" played by Nashville session pro Harold Bradley at RCA's Studio B.




EMM #18, March 1993


Finally, it's crazy you posted that Bobbie Gentry video, as I just added it to another topic today, writing about her friendship with Presley. Elvis riffs on her single, "Ode To Billie Joe," during the session because it was blowing up all over the radio, and to tease friend Lamar Fike, who was in the studio and apparently had a chance to land the publishing on it, but did not get it.

Here's the Gentry post, I created it just minutes after your topic went up:
http://www.elvis-collectors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=81221&p=1494359#p1494359

Thanks again.

Always liked the unedited master of Hi-Heel Sneakers recorded on September 11th,1967 with the snippet of Ode To Billie Joe at the beginning.

Ode To Billie Joe ,a song released as a single in July 1967, written & recorded by Bobbie Gentry was a #1 Hit in the United States & Billboard ranked it at #3 for the year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Billie_Joe

It must have been riding high on the charts for it to be on Elvis's mind at this 1967 recording session

..


Hi-Heel Sneakers ,a song written by Robert Higggenbotham and was recorded by recorded by Tommy Tucker in 1963 and by many artists over the year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Heel_Sneakers

The Elvis.

..

Tommy Tucker .

..



Stevie Wonder.

..



Buddy Guy & Junior Wells .

http://www.allmusic.com/album/alone-acoustic-mw0000677150

..



The Rolling Stones.

..



Jimmy Hughes.

..



Faces with Rod Stewart .

..



Jose Feliciano.

..



Paul McCartney.

..



The Bill Mitchell Quintet.

..



The Searchers.

..



Jerry Lee Lewis.

..



Sammy Davis Jr.

..



Billy Lee Riley.

..



The Everly Brothers.

..



Zsa Zsa Gabor?

..



And then there's this very peculiar version by Janis Joplin.

..




etc etc.......

[Domino]

Great post. If I may, here are some additional thoughts on this recording.

The 1967 Presley cover showed he was finding himself again, cutting a song with some grit after years of Hollywood soundtrack garbage. And when was the last time RCA put out a strong, tough, single A- and B-side? 1968 started out very strong for Elvis.

Guitar Man b/w High Heel Sneakers, released January 13, 1968.

680113_RCA 9425.jpg

It's also worth noting that even Elvis had a little sitar in his music in the heady year of 1967, as we hear some electric guitar sitar on "High Heel Sneakers" played by Nashville session pro Harold Bradley at RCA's Studio B.




EMM #18, March 1993


Finally, it's crazy you posted that Bobbie Gentry video, as I just added it to another topic today, writing about her friendship with Presley. Elvis riffs on the song during the session because it was blowing up all over the radio, and to tease friend Lamar Fike, who was in the studio and apparently had a chance to land the publishing on it, but did not get it.

Here's the Gentry post, I created it just minutes after your topic went up:
http://www.elvis-collectors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=81221&p=1494359#p1494359

Thanks again.

Always liked the unedited master of Hi-Heel Sneakers recorded on September 11th,1967 with the snippet of Ode To Billie Joe at the beginning.

Ode To Billie Joe ,a song released as a single in July 1967, written & recorded by Bobbie Gentry was a #1 Hit in the United States & Billboard ranked it at #3 for the year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Billie_Joe

It must have been riding high on the charts for it to be on Elvis's mind at this 1967 recording session

..


Hi-Heel Sneakers ,a song written by Robert Higggenbotham and was recorded by recorded by Tommy Tucker in 1963 and by many artists over the year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Heel_Sneakers

The Elvis.

..

Tommy Tucker .

..



Stevie Wonder.

..



Buddy Guy & Junior Wells .

http://www.allmusic.com/album/alone-acoustic-mw0000677150

..



The Rolling Stones.

..



Jimmy Hughes.

..



Faces with Rod Stewart .

..



Jose Feliciano.

..



Paul McCartney.

..



The Bill Mitchell Quintet.

..



The Searchers.

..



Jerry Lee Lewis.

..



Sammy Davis Jr.

..



Billy Lee Riley.

..



The Everly Brothers.

..



Zsa Zsa Gabor?

..



And then there's this very peculiar version by Janis Joplin.

..




etc etc.......

Yeah...that's pretty crazy.And you posted it as a reply to another topic I commented on.
This morning on the radio ,I thought I heard the announcer say that today is Ode To Billy Joe day.Can't be certain that's what he said but it made me think of this song where Elvis sings a couple lines of it.

Thank-you for the added info.Always great to tell the story with as much info as can be found.

[Davelee]

Gee, this is one long post, Domino, but a great one! I absolutely love Elvis' version of this - it really does kick-ass! There's a few versions you've posted here that i wasn't aware of, so that was a nice surprise. I have the Tommy Tucker original on 45 in nice condition. I shall give some of the others a listen later, I have a feeling the Stevie Wonder version is gonna be good. There is an obscure version by a group called Cross Section it was used in the film "Quadrophrenia". Can't imagine Sammy Davis Jr doing it, so that should be interesting to hear.

[Davelee]

... .

[MysteryTrain]

Interesting post for the third of June.

"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day. I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay."

MT

[Domino]

Interesting post for the third of June.

"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day. I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay."

MT

Right.The 3rd of June.That's why the radio guy said it was Ode To Billie Joe day.Thanks.

[MikeFromHolland]

Interesting post for the third of June.

"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day. I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay."

MT

Right.The 3rd of June.That's why the radio guy said it was Ode To Billie Joe day.Thanks.

It's the third of June. Whatever happened to Bobbie Gentry?
By The Washington Post on June 03, 2016 at 12:41 PM

It's the third of June. Somewhere in Mississippi, it's another sleepy, dusty delta day. Since the summer of 1967, when the Southern gothic ballad "Ode to Billie Joe," set on this day in that place, first hit the airwaves, the song has captivated American pop culture in a way few ever have.

Written and sung by an unknown young woman from Mississippi named Bobbie Gentry, it was an eerie, minor-key mystery about an unnamed young woman and her family sitting around a farm dinner table discussing, in elliptical terms, the suicide of Billie Joe McAllister.

It sold tens of millions of copies. It knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts. It spawned a 1976 movie. It made Gentry a hot Vegas star. She kicked around with Elvis and Tom Jones and briefly married casino magnate Bill Harrah.

The song's iconic success also helped launch one of the most enduring riddles in pop: Whatever happened to Bobbie Gentry?

She had a few minor hits after "Ode," appeared on early '70s entertainment shows and then went kapoof in the early 1980s. No appearances. No pictures. No interviews.

Over time, she became regarded as the J.D. Salinger of pop music. She made Harper Lee look chatty. She went full Garbo.

It's most often reported that she is living in seclusion in Los Angeles, as if she has morphed into a Southern-fried Norma Desmond holed up in a creepy mansion on Sunset Boulevard.

That isn't true.

And Gentry spoke to a reporter, for this story, apparently for the first time in three decades. We caution you not to get too excited about that. It's one sentence. Could be two.

Then she hung up.

---

All Southerners come home, even if it's in a pine box, Truman Capote once opined.

That is what the 70-something Gentry has done, hidden in plain sight, known perhaps to a few friends and neighbors, but nobody who ever blabs.

"I think, to some, it's an open secret," says Tara Murtha, author of "Ode to Billie Joe," a 2015 book that's by far the most thorough biography of Gentry's public career. In it, Murtha cites reports from Savannah papers that a "Bobbie Gentry" lived in the Georgia city in the late 1990s but had since moved.

In an interview, she said she knew where Gentry now lives but had not printed it. She never spoke to Gentry but said she had sent letters through intermediaries that were never answered.

The short answer to one of pop's great mysteries:

Bobbie Gentry lives about a two-hour drive from the site of the Tallahatchie Bridge that made her so famous, in a gated community, in a very nice house that cost about $1.5 million. Her neighbors, some locals and some real estate agents know who she is, although it's not clear which of her many possible names she goes by.

We'll be a little more specific in a minute.

First: How can someone once so famous vanish so completely?

A complicated family history, a stage name, a couple of short-lived marriages and a false birth date on her official PR material helped.

Gentry's name at birth, in Mississippi, was Roberta Lee Streeter. But her parents divorced when she was young, and she lived with her grandparents. She moved to L.A. to be with her mom and soon adopted the "Bobbie Gentry" stage name. She divorced Harrah, then married and divorced country singer Jim Stafford in the late 1970s.

Further, the music studio had shaved a couple of years off her actual birthday.

Gentry's family didn't talk, and she had cut off nearly all her friends in the music business. When reporters reached out through intermediaries, there was never a reply.

"I think it's simpler than it seems," Murtha said. "She apparently didn't like the music business, went on to other businesses and never missed the spotlight."

---

Stafford and Gentry had a very small wedding in 1978, but they did allow a reporter from the Memphis Commercial Appeal to attend the ceremony on their 120-acre horse farm about 20 miles west of the city.

"It's wonderful to stand on your own land, where you plan to live and raise a family," Stafford is quoted as saying at the time.

Today, computer databases clearly show that perhaps the nation's most reclusive pop star lives in an 8,000-square-foot house with a great pool not all that far from the old homestead. Real estate agents confirmed it.

So, I found myself looking at a phone number on my computer screen for several seconds. No reporter, to the best of my knowledge, has spoken to Gentry in decades.

I punched the numbers.

After a few rings, a pleasant woman's voice said: "Hello."

I introduced myself and my newspaper. I said I was looking for the person whose name appears on the property owner's record.

There was a dead pause of several seconds. My fingers clenched open and closed.

"There's no one here by that name," she said, finally.

I apologized and started to read back the number, to make sure I had dialed it correctly, and she hung up.

But there isn't really any doubt.

I talked, for about 13 seconds, to Bobbie Gentry.

Some mysteries can be solved. What Billie Joe and his girlfriend threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge? No. That can't.

---

© 2016 The Washington Post

Neely Tucker is a staff writer in the Sunday Magazine. He has reported from more than 50 countries around the world and from two dozen of these United States.

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2016/06/bobbie_gentry_where_ode_to_bil.html

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