After "Harper Valley PTA"
During the late 1960s and into the very early 1970s, Riley ranked among the most popular female vocalists in the country music industry. She had five Grammy Award nominations and four Country Music Association nominations, and performed a duet with Loretta Lynn. She had success on the country charts again, but on a lesser scale.
Other hits following "Harper Valley PTA" include "The Girl Most Likely," "There Never Was A Time," "The Rib," "The Back Side of Dallas," "Country Girl," "Oh Singer," and "Good Enough to Be Your Wife."
Riley became known as much for her sex appeal and beauty as for her music, foreshadowing Shania Twain and other contemporary female vocalists by nearly three decades. At a time when many country queens were keeping a wholesome image by wearing gingham dresses, Riley kept in tune with typical late-60s fashion by donning miniskirts and go-go boots for her stage outfits. Her mod persona opened many doors (and perhaps started a sexual revolution) in country music, but Riley herself was not comfortable with her image, and she eventually abandoned it for a more conservative wardrobe. In the 1993 CBS documentary The Woman of Country, she noted that during the "Harper Valley" period, it was largely her publicist and manager who were responsible for creating and playing up her sexy image (replicating somewhat the look of the protagonist in the song).
Read more about this topic: Jeannie C. Riley
Famous quotes containing the words harper and/or valley:
“When Abraham Lincoln penned the immortal emancipation proclamation he did not stop to inquire whether every man and every woman in Southern slavery did or did not want to be free. Whether women do or do not wish to vote does not affect the question of their right to do so.”
—Mary E. Haggart, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Jugful of milk! It was yours years ago
when I lived in the valley of my bones,
bones dumb in the swamp. Little playthings.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)