Jeannie C. Riley
Singer/Recording Artist
Air Date March 11, 2012
An American country music and gospel singer, Jeannie C. Riley is best known for her 1968 country and pop hit “Harper Valley PTA” (written by Tom T. Hall), which missed (by one week) becoming the Billboard Country and Pop number one hit at the same time. In subsequent years, she had moderate chart success with country music, but never again duplicated the success of “Harper Valley PTA”. She became a born-again Christian and began recording gospel music during the late 1970s.
Riley’s great success brought a number of offers from Hollywood, and she appeared with Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Bette Davis, Tom Jones, Ed Sullivan and others on various television programs.
Riley left Plantation Records for MGM Records in 1972, recording several albums, but only two of her singles from the period, “Good Morning Country Rain” and “Give Myself A Party,” cracked the top 30. Later stints at Mercury Records and Warner Bros. Records produced only a couple of charted singles, but Riley remained highly in demand as a concert artist well into the 1980s.
In the 1970s, she became a Born Again Christian and began recording gospel music. As result of her conversion, she distanced herself from the song for a time, due to its content. However, it was never removed from her live set and she still performs it. In 1980, she published her autobiography, From Harper Valley to the Mountain Top, which told her story of stardom in pop music to moving more into gospel music. The following year, she released a new gospel album with the same title.