"Harper Valley PTA" is a country song written by Tom T. Hall,[1] which in 1968 became a major international hit single for country singer Jeannie C. Riley. Riley's record, her debut, sold over six million copies as a single, and it made her the first woman to top both the Billboard Hot 100 and the U.S. Hot Country Singles charts with the same song (but not at the same time), a feat that would not be repeated until Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" 13 years later in 1981. It was also Riley's only Top 40 pop hit.
Publisher Newkeys Music, Inc. filed the original copyright on December 26, 1967 (1967-12-26), which was revised on October 28, 1968 (1968-10-28), to reflect new lyrics added by Hall.[1]
Nashville studio musician-producer Jerry Kennedy played the dobro prominent on the record.[2]
Story
The focus of the song's narrative is Mrs. Johnson, whose teenage daughter attends Harper Valley Junior High. The girl comes home one day with a note for her mother from the local PTA, criticizing Mrs. Johnson for wearing short dresses and spending her nights drinking in the company of men. The note closes with a statement by the PTA that she should do a better job of raising her daughter.
During a PTA meeting that afternoon, Mrs. Johnson barges in unannounced and wearing a miniskirt and reveals a long list of the members' private indiscretions:
Bobby Taylor, who has repeatedly asked Mrs. Johnson out on a date and whose wife is hinted to be committing adultery while he is away[3]
Mr. Baker, whose secretary had to leave town for an undisclosed reason
Widow Jones, who leaves her window shades up and little to onlookers' imaginations
Mr. Harper, absent from the meeting due to the aftereffects of a recent drinking binge
Shirley Thompson, who also has a drinking problem, as evidenced by gin on her breath
Mrs. Johnson rebukes the PTA for having the nerve to call her an unfit mother, comparing the town to Peyton Place and labeling the members as hypocrites.[4]
In the final lines, the narrator reveals that Mrs. Johnson is her mother.[4]
The song makes two references to short hemlines ("you're wearing your dresses way too high"; "wore her miniskirt into the room") in reference to the miniskirt and the minidress, which had been gaining popularity in the four years since they were first introduced.
The expression "This is just a little Peyton Place" is a reference to the television show Peyton Place, based on the earlier novel and film of the same name, where a small town hides scandal and moral hypocrisy behind a tranquil facade. The show, then in the top 20 of Nielsen ratings, was in its fourth season when "Harper Valley P.T.A." was released.[5]
The final line of the song ("..the day my mama 'socked it to' the Harper Valley PTA") was a reference to "Sock it to me!", a very popular catch-phrase frequently used in Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. According to Shelby Singleton, producer of Riley's record, this line was changed at the last minute, at the suggestion of his "wife at the time".[6]
Inspiration
In 2005, Hall noted that he had witnessed a similar scenario when he was a child in Olive Hill, Kentucky, in the mid-1940s; the mother of one of Hall's classmates had drawn the ire of local school board members for her modern ways, and the school was taking out their frustrations on her daughter. The mother gave a verbal tongue-lashing at the school, an iconoclastic move that was unheard of at the time.[7]
Legacy
Riley, who was working as a secretary in Nashville for Jerry Chesnut, got to hear the song and recorded it for Shelby Singleton's independent Plantation Records label. It became a massive hit for her. 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.[8] Riley's version 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 2019, the 1968 recording of the song by Riley on Plantation Records was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[9]
Shortly after "Harper Valley PTA" reached its peak in success, singer-comedian Sheb Wooley, using his alter-ego Ben Colder, recorded a parody version called "Harper Valley PTA (Later That Same Day)." In the parody version, Colder meets up with the PTA board members (each of whom Mrs. Johnson called out in the original) at Kelly's Place and attempts to explain their characters in a positive vein. He eventually finds the PTA members more interesting to be with. Colder's version reached No. 24 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in late 1968, and No. 58 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In the 1970s, Riley became a born-again Christian, and though she briefly distanced herself from the song when she began singing gospel music, she never excluded it from her concerts, and it was always her most requested and popular number. She titled her 1980 autobiography From Harper Valley to the Mountain Top, and released a gospel album in 1981 with the same title.
Sequel
In 1984, Riley recorded a sequel song, "Return to Harper Valley", which was also written by Tom T. Hall, but failed to chart. In the sequel, Riley sings as Mrs. Johnson, who is now a grandmother. While attending the local high-school dance, she observes that some townsfolk conquered their vices while others did not. She also notices both students and adults engaging in risky behavior (smoking, drug use, nudity), but instead of becoming angry, she says a prayer (consistent with Riley's real-life conversion to Christianity), and plans to address the PTA the next day, but in a less confrontational manner than before.
Norwegian translation
"Harper Valley PTA" was translated by Terje Mosnes [no] into Norwegian as "Fru Johnsen" (lit.'Mrs. Johnsen'). A recording by Inger Lise Rypdal was released in 1968.[10] It charted for 16 weeks, peaking at first place, which it held for nine weeks in a row.[11] However, the song faced controversy over its lyrics as they discussed double standards in the Christian milieu, leading to serious debate over the song in the Storting (Norwegian Parliament).[12]
Spanish translation
A Spanish cover by the name "La Junta Harper de Moral" (Harper's Moral Committee) was recorded by the Argentinian singer Juan Ramón and the orchestra of Horacio Malvicino, released by RCA Victor in 1968 [1].
^Larsen, Svend Erik Løken (1999–2005). "Inger Lise Rypdal". SNL (in Norwegian Bokmål). Retrieved 7 August 2022. Riktig kontroversiell og enda mer populær var oppfølgeren, Fru Johnsen, en oversettelse av den amerikanske "Harper Valley P.T.A.". Den norske teksten, av Terje Mosnes, omhandlet i likhet med originalen temaer som hykleri og dobbeltmoral i kristne miljøer; den ble prompte oppfattet som blasfemi, krevd forbudt fra indremisjonshold og seriøst debattert i Stortinget, hvorpå den solgte i over 50 000 eksemplarer. ["Fru Johnsen", a translation of the American "Harper Valley P.T.A.", was quite controversial and even more popular than the original. The Norwegian text, by Terje Mosnes, like the original, dealt with themes such as hypocrisy and double standards in Christian mileu; it was promptly perceived as blasphemy, demands that it be banned from inner mission were made and the song was seriously debated in the Storting, after which it sold over 50,000 copies.]
