Ode to Billie Joe

Jimmie Haskell arranged and conducted and Joe Polito engineered. Gentry plays vocals and acoustic guitar, with Earl Palmer on drums, James Burton and Mike Deasy on guitar, Jack Sheldon on trumpet and a string section. The songs were recorded as guitar-and-vocal tracks and the overdubs finished within days; it was in stores less than a month after completion, and Capitol pre-ordered 500,000 copies, a debut-pressing record for the label. She wrote everything except Jim Ford's "Niki Hoeky". The album reached number 1 on the Top LPs and country albums charts, and Billboard called it one of the top albums of the year; AllMusic gave 4.5 stars. The listed times sum to about 29:24 against 30:18 given.