Like Mark Twain, some writers draw inspiration from their childhood, whether it’s from their own experiences, or stories about the colorful characters that populated their hometown. Tom T. Hall did just that. But he needed a singer to bring his song to life.

Jeannie C. Riley hailed from Texas and dreamed of making it big as a country singer. She devoted every waking moment toward this goal, not only singing constantly, but even taking a shorthand class in school so she could quickly transcribe all the lyrics from songs on the radio and then learn them. Riley made trips to Nashville, the capital of country music, and even got the chance to record a couple of demos, but despite glimmers of hope she never received any word back. Eventually, even the glimmers disappeared.

In the summer of 1966, Jeannie’s husband, in a quite progressive move for the time, told her to pack her bags because if she wanted this life so badly then they needed to move to Nashville. Riley picked up a secretarial job to help make ends meet and became known to music insiders around town due to her singular drive to make it big as a singer. They gave her side jobs recording songwriting demos which would then go out to publishers, producers, and big name country stars.

In the summer of 1968, one of her demo tapes crossed the desk of a producer named Shelby Singleton who thought her voice would perfectly fit a song he’d been sitting on for the last six months. The song was called “Harper Valley P.T.A.” and its young writer, Tom T. Hall, had penned songs for many country stars over the past few years, but had yet to score a major hit.

Hall based the lyrics on actual events that took place in his hometown of Olive Hill in the 1940s. In small-town Kentucky you were expected to be (small c) conservative and conformist, and one lady most certainly did not adhere to convention. She was outspoken, iconoclastic, and Bohemian and the town elders didn’t like it. They couldn’t do anything overt to curb her behavior, so they took a different tack and punished her daughter. Big mistake.

The single, widowed mom had endured enough adversity and wasn’t going to put up with this cockamamie BS. She showed up to the next P.T.A. meeting and let everybody have it: the school board, the town leaders, anyone who got in her way. Word about the tongue-lashing spread like wildfire and quickly became legendary in Olive Hill. Tom T. Hall was just a boy at the time, but he never forgot the story of the brave woman who took on the entire town. When he wrote a song about the incident, he only changed the names (to protect the guilty) and the clothes (miniskirts not being around in the 40s).

When Shelby Singleton heard Riley’s voice on her demo tape he told her manager to get her over to his office immediately. She signed a contract and the very next evening, after working at secretarial tasks all day, went into the studio to record “Harper Valley P.T.A.” Riley didn’t love the song and felt she’d been rushed into putting her name on the contract, and so she poured her resentment into her performance. It was all over in about fifteen minutes as Riley nailed the vocal on the second take.

Even though they’d wrapped the session, the studio musicians refused to leave, asking to hear “Harper Valley P.T.A.” again and again. Anyone who left the studio soon came back with others in tow to hear the sure-fire hit. Hearing it played back, Riley quickly changed her opinion of the song.

Released as a single in August of 1968, only a couple of weeks after the recording date, “Harper Valley P.T.A.” made the largest jump in Hot 100 history, from #74 to #7, on its way to topping both the pop and country charts. Riley never hit the Top 40 again, but did have some success on the country charts through the 70s, which was fine with her — it was all she ever wanted.

So sock it to ’em… with Jeannie C. Riley.