Mystery!

 If you've heard the song "Ode To Billie Joe," the mystery from 1967, you might have wondered how the songwriter and singer of that smash hit is doing.

And you wouldn't be alone.

I was just telling someone the other day about Joseph Mitchell, the New Yorker magazine writer who developed writer's block in 1964 after realizing he had been duped into believing that a certain oddball in New York had written a massive history of the world.

So devastated at being taken in was Mitchell that he did not write another published word until he retired from the magazine in 1996. Co-workers said he showed up for work every day, sat at his desk, and simply was not able to write again. The only utterance he was heard to give out with was an occasional sigh.

Let's do the math on that - 32 years he worked without getting anything done.

Bobbie Gentry, who had a couple of other hits (most notable was "Fancy," later covered by Reba McEntire) and never released more new music after her "Patchwork" album bombed in 1971 (it hardly sold at all, no hit singles came off it) was last seen in public on April 30, 1982 at the Academy of Country Music Awards.

No music, no appearances, nothing. Week after next, that will be 43 invisible, unheard years of a woman with so much talent, but what happened? Rumors say she might be living in a gated community in Memphis, or maybe in Los Angeles. 

I would love to know how she is and what she's been busy with.

And as with Jos. Mitchell, how come the people we like go missing, and the ones we wish would disappear for three or four decades just stay around day after day after day?