"Harper Valley PTA" is a country song written by Tom T. Hall, 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 , which was revised on , to reflect new lyrics added by Hall.
Hashville studio musician-producer Jerry Kennedy played the Dobro prominent on the record.
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 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.
In the final lines, the narrator reveals that Mrs. Johnson is her mother.
Cultural references
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 Peyton Place television show 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.
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".
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.
Legacy
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. 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. 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.
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.