I am not sure why I bought this album some time ago the first half of the year. Other than her big hit, I was greatly unaware of the rest of her work. I think the song titles sounded good enough. This was a dollar.
Jeannie C Riley was born in Stamford, Texas in 1945. She moved up to Nashville and got her big break with her hit single “Harper Valley PTA”, written by Tom T Hall. This single was a bonafide country smash hit in 1968 spawning many tv specials and a made for TV movie with Barbara Eden. Riley would receive modest hits outside of her big one but popularity would eventually ween or wane, whatever is proper english. She would convert to Christianity in the 70’s and move into gospel music. However, despite giving up her trademark short skirts and kinky boots, she still performed her big hit when performing live.
This was Riley’s follow up album to “Harper Valley PTA”. It was released in 1969 and went to #9 on the country charts. I can picture the A&R guy for this, pushing for more story songs after the success of “Harper Valley PTA”. As a result, this album is heavy with the story song. These make up the majority of the album. Songs such as “What Was Her Name”, “Edna Burgoo”, “What Ever Happened to Charlie Brown” and the title track showcase this. I am not a big fan of the story song to begin with but this album is overkill. Again, this is probably a greater function of the A&R folks trying to duplicate previous hits. As any investment broker can tell you, past performance is not indicator of future success.
For a sample, I was originally going to go with “The Part of Honey” mainly because it has the electric sitar, played by Jerry Kennedy as so advised on the back cover. However, I decided to instead go with “The Girl Most Likely” which was released as a single that would go to #6 on the country charts. It tells the story of a girl on the wrong side of the tracks and a teacher’s pet with a silver spoon in her mouth. Despite everyone in the town’s opinion, it is the teacher’s pet that gets in trouble and from what I assume, gets knocked up.
That is not to say that the rest of the songs aren’t okay but I have to give this a Meh based on personal tastes. The abundance of story songs kind of feels forced and is not really my cup of tea. That is not to take away from Riley’s talent.