Customer Reviews

Harper Valley Pta

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Original Album Has 11 Songs, This Re-Issue Only Has 8. I am going to wait until someone at Sun/Plantation decides to Reissue The Complete Album, Along With The Complete Albums of "Yearbooks & Yesterdays", "Things Go Better With Love", "Country Girl", "Generation Gap", & "Jeannie" (All By Jeannie C. Riley) Along With Dee Mullins' Album "The Continuing Story of Harper Valley PTA" and Harlow Wilcox's Albums "Groovy Grubworm" & "Cripple Cricket" On Compact Discs. How About A Box Set With All 6 Albums mentioned above by Jeannie C. Riley, Plus The Songs That Never Appeared On The Albums (Like The B-Sides to the hits), Alternate Takes (if any exist), etc. That Would Be A Great Start! (HINT, HINT) Until Then, I guess my LPs will have to do

I was hoping this was a complete reissue, but 3 tracks seem to be missing from the original album. "The Cotton Patch", "The Little Town Square", and "Satan Place". Still, an enjoyable campy country classic

If you enjoyed the "Harper Valley" movie and TV show then you would enjoy this CD.

I have searched for a long time for a couple of the titles on this album. Listening to the cd brought back a lot of memories from my childhood and I have thoroughly enjoyed being able to add these titles back to my collection.

Love the album, love the singing, love the singer. No one could have produced this album better than Jeannie C. Riley. Real truth in her songs. Relates to small town issues in the public school and the troubled school board. She tells it like it was (and in some places, still is today).

I hope someone in the near future decides to re-issue the complete album with all eleven songs. I'll hold off buying this one for the time being and keep listening to my record.

Jeannie C. Riley was very well known and loved in the sixties and seventies for her storytelling music. This is a wonderful cd. Who doesn't love the song "Harper Valley PTA"!

***NOTE: This version of "Harper Valley PTA" is inexplicably missing three tracks. What makes it even worse is that they are three of the BEST tracks. An online search led me to a complete version of this album on CD. My 5-star review is for the COMPLETE album ***

Let me start right off by saying I have never been a big fan of country music. Probably because all the time I was growing up it was my mother's music. I listened to all the greats: Loretta, Tammy, George, Conway, Merle, Whispering Bill Withers, Reba, Alan Jackson, among others. But one LP of Mom's stood out from the rest and had an undeniable, strange appeal for a five-year-old. That album was Jeannie C. Riley's "Harper Valley PTA".

I am not quite exactly sure what made this an early favorite of mine. Looking back on it, I imagine it was because the songs were so well-written and each told a story. The depictions of small-town scandal, hypocrisy, hardship, and loss are so vividly drawn on this album, I love it as much now as I did in 1973.

Of course, the title song was a huge pop crossover hit that reached #1 in 1968 on Billboard and even spawned a movie and TV series that starred Barbara Eden in the role of the song's protagonist. It remains to this day one of the best "tell-off" songs ever. I just love the way Jeannie spits out the line "You're all Harper Valley hypocrites!". She basically recorded the song against her will, and the anger she must have felt at the label really came through and helped sell the song. It's the country-flavored venom that comes out of her mouth that makes it so memorable.

"Window Jones" who was mentioned in "Harper", gets her own song on the second track. It features amazing banjo, drums and organ.

The downbeat "No Brass Band" has Jeannie on a homebound train to face the music because "She and Daddy never hit the big-time", and "Daddy's in a pine box in the baggage car".

A distorted male voice appears as "Mr. Harper", the richest man in town whom Jeannie tries to sing some sense into realizing he overdrinks to forget the fact that his young bride's cheating on him. The banjo outro on this one is fantastic.

In "Run, Jeannie, Run" eldest daughter Jeannie struggles to keep the family together after Mama dies giving birth. Papa abandons them for wine, women and song and gets hit by a train. At the end of the song, Jeannie runs away for a better life before the children's welfare authorities can catch her.

"Shed Me No Tears" is more or less the odd egg in that it's the only selection that isn't really a story-song. It has depressing lyrics but a memorable melody.

My favorite of all the songs is definitely "The Cotton Patch", which opened Side Two in the days of vinyl. A teen-age Jeannie gets a little too big for her britches and hitchhikes to Dallas to snag a rich man. The cold reality soon sets in and I won't spoil the rest for you, but there's a hilarious line in this one about dog food.

"Sippin' Shirley Thompson" gives us a more intimate look at the sad, empty life of one of the characters from "Harper Valley PTA".

Another tale of small-town hardship comes in the uptempo "Little Town Square". Jeannie's Mama dies in this one, too.

Things get their most morbid in "The Ballad of Louise". I won't reveal too much, but here a hussy flaunts her affair with Jeannie's man, and this being a country ballad, the inevitable happens.

The closer "Satan Place" (get it?) nicely bookends the album because it's basically "Harper Valley PTA" set in a Town Council meeting instead of a PTA meeting, where everyone's dirty laundry is aired in public. I actually like this one even better than "Harper".

Jeannie's delivery on every one of these songs is unique and appropriate to the lyrics. She sounds sorrowful and vulnerable on fare like "Run, Jeannie, Run" and "Little Town Square" and really gets her back up on ones like "The Cotton Patch" and "Satan Place". The slow songs don't really drag this album down like they could have because the lyrics and performances are so captivating.

If you love the song "Harper Valley PTA" get this CD, the other tracks are equally good, with two being even better, IMO.

My folks had this record when I was a kid. Brings back memories. I don't like all the songs, but this is a classic.
The Paulos

This cd is missing 3 tracks. I wasn't paying attention when I bought it to recongnize that, nor did I read the customer reviews. Luckily, I recorded the original viyl LP on CD before I donated it, so I don't feel too bad about my faulty purchase.