Bobbie Gentry, the country-folk singer-songwriter best known for her 1967 hit "Ode to Billie Joe", was born Roberta Lee Streeter in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, on 27 July 1942 – 84 years ago today. She is being remembered for her trailblazing career: she was one of the first female artists to write and produce most of her own material, and she penned "Fancy", the song Reba McEntire later took into the US top 10 in 1990. Gentry's influence and mysterious disappearance from public life have also made her the subject of speculation, with many believing she inspired Taylor Swift's song "The Lucky One".

Raised on a farm without electricity, Gentry reportedly wrote her first song aged seven before moving to California as a teenager and later studying music at the Los Angeles Conservatory. "Ode to Billie Joe" topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks, sold more than 300 million copies worldwide, and its accompanying album knocked The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band off the top of the charts in 1967. She went on to host a BBC Two variety show, released seven studio albums before retiring in 1982, and has not been seen publicly since attending the Academy of Country Music Awards that year; a 2016 Washington Post investigation located her living near Memphis, Tennessee, and she was later inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.