A Brazen Single Woman Inspired Jeannie C. Riley’s Biggest Hit in 1968

In 1968, Jeannie C. Riley released her debut single, “Harper Valley PTA”. The song, written by Tom T. Hall, is the title track of Riley’s freshman record.

“Harper Valley PTA” is a story song about a young girl who brings her mother home a note from school. The song says in part, “The note said, ‘Mrs. Johnson, you’re wearing your dresses way too high / It’s reported you’ve been drinking and a-runnin’ ’round with men and going wild / And we don’t believe you ought to be bringing up your little girl this way / It was signed by the secretary, Harper Valley PTA.“

Although it sounds like a crazy tale, “Harper Valley PTA” is surprisingly at least partially factual.

“The story is a true story,” Hall tells The Boot. “I didn’t make the story up. I chose the story to make a statement, but I changed the names to protect the innocent.”

The Story Behind “Harper Valley PTA” by Jeannie C. Riley

“Harper Valley PTA” may never have been written if Hall didn’t come from a large family, which surprisingly led him to write this song.

“There were 10 kids in our family,” Hall explains. “We’d get up in the morning, and my mother and father would get bored with us running around, and we’d go terrorize the neighbors up and down this little road we lived on—after we had done our chores, of course. I was just hanging around downtown when I was about nine years old, and heard the story and got to know this lady. I was fascinated by her grit. To see this very insignificant, socially disenfranchised lady—a single mother—who was willing to march down to the local aristocracy and read them the riot act, so to speak, was fascinating.”

Still, it took Hall 30 more years before he wrote “Harper Valley PTA”. The song was also inspired by the author Sinclair Lewis.

“As a young man, I read Lewis’ novels Babbitt and Elmer Gantry, which is about hypocrisy. Babbitt is, of course, about the social structure of the small town. So, being a big Sinclair Lewis fan, when I wrote ‘Harper Valley’, I incorporated elements of Elmer Gantry into the song.”

“Harper Valley PTA” is Riley’s only song to reach the top of the charts. It also gave Riley her only CMA Award, for Single of the Year.

Photo by ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

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