Jeannie C. Riley’s 1968 debut single, “Harper Valley PTA”, became her biggest hit and a pointed story about a mother confronting the hypocrisy of her small-town community. Written by Tom T. Hall, the song mattered because it challenged the authority and respectability of local social elites while presenting a determined single mother as its central figure.

Hall said the story was partly based on a real woman he encountered as a child, although he changed names to protect those involved. Influenced by Sinclair Lewis’s novels about small-town social structures and hypocrisy, Hall took three decades to turn the memory into a song; it became Riley’s only chart-topper and earned her sole CMA Award, for Single of the Year.