Released August 1968 Length 3:16 | ||
B-side "Yesterday All Day Long Today" |
"Harper Valley PTA" is a country song written by Tom T. Hall that was a major international hit single for country singer Jeannie C. Riley in 1968. Riley's record sold over six million copies as a single. The song made Riley the first woman to top both the Billboard Hot 100 and the U.S. Hot Country Singles charts with the same song, a feat that would go unrepeated until Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" in 1981.
Contents
Story
The song tells the story of Mrs. Johnson, a widowed mother of a teenage girl, who becomes outraged when one afternoon her daughter brings home a note from her junior high school's PTA decrying Mrs. Johnson's supposedly scandalous behavior by small-town standards. According to the PTA she is setting a bad example for her daughter. In response, Mrs. Johnson attends the next PTA meeting (being held that same afternoon), wearing a miniskirt, to the surprise of the PTA members. She then exposes various episodes of misbehavior and indiscretion on the part of several members of the PTA, concluding with, "This is just a little Peyton Place / And you're all Harper Valley hypocrites!" The singer is the daughter recalling her mother's (Mrs. Johnson) story.
Legacy
"The country singer Margie Singleton asked Tom T. Hall to write her a song similar to Bobby Gentry's Grammy-winning hit "Ode To Billie Joe", which she had covered the previous year, and which Gentry wrote and recorded in 1967. The melody is essentially the same as that of the Gentry song, but Gentry seemingly was never informed or given any credit by Hall. After driving past a school called Harpeth Valley Elementary School in Bellevue, Tennessee, Hall noted the name and wrote "Harper Valley P.T.A." about a fictional confrontation between a young widow Stella Johnson and a local PTA group who objected to her manner of dress, social drinking, and friendliness with town's men folk. Jeannie C. Riley, who was working as a secretary in Nashville for Jerry Chesnut, got to hear the song and recorded it herself and it became a massive hit for her."Tom T. Hall reportedly first offered the song to Skeeter Davis, who declined. Plantation Records, the label on which Riley recorded the song, rush-released the single when they learned that both Billie Jo Spears and Margie Singleton had just recorded the song as well. Riley's record was an immediate smash; Capitol Records did release Spears' version the same week, but it failed to chart.
Hall later stated that his inspiration for the song came when one day he was passing by the Harpeth Valley Elementary School in Bellevue, Tennessee, not far from his then-home in Franklin. He liked the sound of the name and decided to write a song using a similar place name. He also reportedly wrote the song about Olive Hill, Kentucky, where Hall grew up.
The song was later the inspiration for a 1978 motion picture and a short-lived 1981 television series, both starring Barbara Eden, playing the heroine of the song, Mrs. Johnson—who now had a first name, Stella.
Several other songs in the Harper Valley PTA album also told stories of some of the other characters from the song, including Mayor Harper, Widow Jones, and Shirley Thompson.
The classic Harper Valley PTA album cover shows a minidress-clad Riley—portraying Mrs. Johnson with PTA note in hand—standing beside a girl, who is portraying the teenage daughter of Mrs. Johnson.
Jeannie C. Riley's recording of the song won her a Grammy for the Best Country Vocal Performance, Female. Her recording was also nominated for "Record of the Year" and "Song of the Year" in the pop field.
In the 1970s, Riley became a born-again Christian, and started to sing gospel music and briefly distanced herself from the song. However, she never dropped the song from her concerts and it was always her most requested and popular number.
Riley titled her 1980 autobiography From Harper Valley to the Mountain Top, and released a gospel album in 1981 with the same title.
The single's jump from 81 to 7 in its second week on the Billboard Hot 100 in late August 1968 is the decade's highest climb into that chart's Top Ten.
Sequel
Riley recorded a sequel song, "Return To Harper Valley", in 1984 (also written by Hall) but it was not a commercial success.
In the sequel, Riley sings as Mrs. Johnson (instead of her daughter as in the original). After purchasing a ticket to the high school dance (with the winner receiving a Stray Cats album) she decided to attend. This time she decided to wear a full-length dress and mentions how some folks changed, some for the good (Bobby Taylor, who repeatedly asked her for dates, was now paying attention to his wife, while Mr. Harper and Shirley Thompson became sober and later married) and others for the bad (Mr. Kelly never stopped his alcohol abuse and died from cirrhosis as a result, while "Widow Jones" and an unnamed child died in a traffic accident as a result of her missing a curve due to speeding).
However, she noticed prevalent substance abuse among the youth, and initially decided to get a gun, but decided to pray instead. After remembering her own wild behavior, she decides to attend the PTA meeting the following day and share her concerns.