Jeannie C Riley: Harper Valley PTA (late 1968)

Two questions:

1) Who played guitar?

2) According to Wiki (yeah I know...) JCR basically washed her hands of the song after becoming a Christian in the mid-70s, because of its 'rebellious nature'. Which I got quite badly miffed about (and I am a Christian too), seeing as all the song was rebelling against was small-town politics (like in 'Footloose'), until I realised there might just be more to this story than suited whetever axe the Wiki writer was grinding.

So, was there? What other aspects to the story might there be? Any information appreciated.

One interesting aspect of the story is that Inger Lise Andersen made a Norwegian cover version in 1969 which was met with a lot of controversy. The writer of the Norwegian lyric, Terje Mosnes who was otherwise a journalist in a big tabloid newspaper, carefully rewrote the lyrics to fit perfectly with local Norwegian equivalents and some very conservative Christian circles in Western Norway took it not very lightly. The best line was the last one in the last verse, where "Well, this is just a little Peyton Place and you're all Harper Valley hypocrites" was replaced with "Fordi min skjørtekant er nærmere den himmel dere aldri kommer til", which roughly translates as "because my skirt edge is closer to the Heaven you'll never get to".

Forgot to add that the song was banned in the official Norwegian broadcasting company (which at the time was the only existing radio station in Norway)

(The Norwegian version, that is, the Jeanny Riley song they played without problems - it took Frank Zappa's "Bobby Brown" for an English song to become banned on Norwegian radio)

The great Tom T. Hall wrote the song.

If she actually renounced it, that's pretty damning. It's not like Deep Throat or something.

Rad norwegian tidbits, my brother Geir Hongro. Nærmere den himmel, indeeds!

Fred Nerk, my dude, don't be quite badly miffed. Jerry Kennedy played dobro on that track. He also played guitar for Jerry Lee Lewis & elvis & whatnot.

A +++

"because my skirt edge is closer to the Heaven you'll never get to"

Wanted this to be my new username so bad, couldn't make it fit.

When I was driving around the southwest the past couple of weeks, I just reflexively keep the radio off. AM is almost all talk radio garbage. FM is all Clear Channel. That's it. Somewhere around Sonora, Texas, I finally caught up on all the podcasts, unheard albums in the queue, and tentatively went to the radio and hoped for the best. First station I hit is playing "Harper Valley PTA" and it was the perfect song to hear.

So here's 30 seconds of West Texas soundtracked by Jeannie C. Riley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfYXYS5NzaQ

"Well, this is just a little Peyton Place and you're all Harper Valley hypocrites" was replaced with "Fordi min skjørtekant er nærmere den himmel dere aldri kommer til", which roughly translates as "because my skirt edge is closer to the Heaven you'll never get to".

how did i miss this???????

fwiw "harper valley pta" is my go-to karaoke song, it is a barnburner every time