The story behind Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.” seems somewhat far-fetched, but the song’s meaning is so relatable at the same time. Listeners empathize with the fictional widow Mrs. Johnson as she’s treated like a social pariah by the uppity Harper Valley P.T.A. We all root for the single mother as she takes them down a peg. Her brazenness has become so much of a country music legend that it could only be born from fact.
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The Origins
While the song does tell of the goings-on of a fictional Parent-Teacher Association, the words do harbor some truths.
“Harper Valley P.T.A.” was written by acclaimed country songwriter Tom T. Hall in 1967. The story goes he had been asked to pen a song similar to that of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” which had been dubbed a smash hit that same year.
He took up the challenge, drawing inspiration from his own life just as Gentry had for her classic song.
“The story is a true story,” the songwriter once told 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.”
He then recalled his childhood. “There were 10 kids in our family,” he continued. “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.”
He began to wonder downtown where he took in local chit-chat about one townswoman in particular, the person who would later become the leading lady of Hall’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.”
“I was about nine years old,” he explained, “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.”
He got the name of the school much later. Harper Valley Junior High came to him after driving past Harpeth Valley Elementary School in Bellevue, Tennessee. He took note of the name, and from there, let the character’s story be told.