{"id":33607,"date":"2020-07-31T13:25:31","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T17:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=33607"},"modified":"2020-07-31T13:25:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T17:25:31","slug":"the-bootleg-files-bobbie-gentry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/31\/the-bootleg-files-bobbie-gentry\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Bobbie Gentry"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 735: <\/strong>\u201cBobbie Gentry\u201d (1968-71 British television series starring Bobbie Gentry).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> Bits and pieces can be found on YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> Most of the episodes from the series are considered lost and the surviving episodes would require restoration and the clearing of music and performance rights.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: <\/strong>None.<\/p>\n

This week marked the 78th birthday of Bobbie Gentry, the genre-spanning singer who became a major star in 1967 with her mysteriously melancholic ballad \u201cOde to Billy Joe.\u201d Gentry was a remarkable vocal talent who was equally at home in the folk, country and pop worlds, and she was also a charming on-camera presence who graced many U.S. television variety programs from the late 1960s into the early 1970s.
\n<\/p>\n

Gentry\u2019s popularity crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and in 1968 she was invited by the BBC to host her own television program. \u201cBobbie Gentry\u201d consisted of three seasons of six half-hour episodes that aired in 1968, 1969 and 1971. Sadly, the BBC has a dismal history of preserving its broadcast history and only five of the 18 \u201cBobbie Gentry\u201d episodes are known to survive. The program was never shown in the U.S. \u2013 if it had reached American viewers, there is a better chance that all 18 episodes would still be with us.<\/p>\n

What has survived of \u201cBobbie Gentry\u201d can be found on YouTube in bits and pieces that were uploaded in unauthorized postings by the star\u2019s fans. The surviving 1968 shows did not have a studio audience and most of the numbers were centered on a single, simple set; occasionally, there were cutaways to filmed footage designed to illustrate the lyrics, most uncomfortably in a presentation of the critters cited in Gentry\u2019s tune \u201cBugs.\u201d <\/p>\n

This season focused primarily on Gentry offering renditions of her music \u2013 sometimes alone on a stage with just a guitar, other times in performance while backed by the female dance group Pan\u2019s People in mildly choreographed numbers that enhanced the song without distracting from Gentry\u2019s vocalizing. For the most part, the star was shot in medium or close-ups, and she mostly wore the same well-tailored outfit in the course of the show. It was a genteel and polite production, and while Gentry was beautifully photographed it often seemed that her full personality was not being tapped.<\/p>\n

Gentry welcomed musical guests from the U.S. and U.K. show business worlds. In one of the surviving episodes, the Scottish singer\/songwriter Donovan guested, performing both a solo number and then having duets with Gentry. Their time together is visually invigorating \u2013 two very attractive young singers sitting very close together cross-legged on the floor while playing guitars. Indeed, you half expect them to kiss at any moment. The pair did a version of Donovan\u2019s hippy-dippy \u201cThere is a Mountain\u201d and then offered Gentry\u2019s \u201cBugs,\u201d with its focus on the insect population\u2019s havoc on Mississippi\u2019s farms. Unfortunately, their vocal styles didn\u2019t mesh \u2013 Gentry had a stronger singing voice and was more comfortable on camera than Donovan, who came across as a reedy singer ill-at-ease in the spotlight.<\/p>\n

In another episode, Gentry teamed with The Hollies in a version of the Doug Kershaw tune \u201cLouisiana Man.\u201d Again, the pairing was somewhat off \u2013 while Gentry clearly enjoyed the raucous nature of Kershaw\u2019s Cajun-flavored tune, The Hollies seemed somewhat lost in trying to wrap themselves around its Bayou-rich experience.<\/p>\n

One might assume Gentry had better luck with other guests who joined her in the course of the show\u2019s run: Glen Campbell (with whom she paired memorably on U.S. television), Billy Preston, James Taylor, John Hartford, Randy Newman and a young Elton John turned up on her show.<\/p>\n

No footage from Gentry\u2019s 1969 episodes are online, and the sole segment from the 1971 season is a blurry black-and-white copy of what must have been a color show. This segment has Gentry singing and dancing to the tune \u201cMontego Bay\u201d with a large ensemble, pausing to introduce American singer Jerry Reed and the British duet Sue and Sunny as her guests. This show had a studio audience to enjoy the proceedings \u2013 or, at least I hope they enjoyed it, as a quick camera cutaway found a mostly indifferent-looking bunch. <\/p>\n

And it should be stated that the \u201cMontego Bay\u201d number has to be seen to be believed. Gentry was not the greatest dancer, but she sure knew how to wiggle in too-tight clothing. If that number was any indication, she was eager to lose the genteel lady of the 1968 season and dial up the sex appeal in the 1971 season. <\/p>\n

Some of the Gentry\u2019s audio tracks from her 1968 and 1969 seasons were released in 2018 as the album \u201cBobbie Gentry Live at the BBC,\u201d while tracks from all three seasons were included in another 2018 album entitled \u201cThe Girl from Chickasaw County: The Complete Capitol Masters.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the unlikely event the lost \u201cBobbie Gentry\u201d episodes are recovered, the show would require a digital restoration and a lengthy clearance of music and performance rights before any home entertainment release could be considered. For now, we have to be satisfied with the scraps of video that survived and rue the loss of what seemed to be a pleasantly entertaining endeavor.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen to the award-wining podcast \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 735: \u201cBobbie Gentry\u201d (1968-71 British television series starring Bobbie Gentry). LAST SEEN: Bits and pieces can be found on YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Most of the episodes from the series are considered lost and the surviving episodes would require restoration and the clearing of music and performance rights. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":33608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[1653,2500,2501,2439],"class_list":["post-33607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-bbc","tag-bobbie-gentry","tag-lost-television","tag-television-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33609,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33607\/revisions\/33609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}