Riley's record, her debut, sold over six million copies as a single, and it made her the first woman to top both the Billboard Hot 100 and the U.S.

Publisher Newkeys Music, Inc. filed the original copyright on December 26, 1967 (1967-12-26), which was revised on October 28, 1968 (1968-10-28), to reflect new lyrics added by Hall.

The girl comes home one day with a note for her mother from the local PTA, criticizing Mrs. Johnson for wearing short dresses and spending her nights drinking in the company of men.

The single's jump from 81 to 7 in its second week on the Billboard Hot 100 in late August 1968 is the decade's highest climb into that chart's Top Ten.

In the parody version, Colder meets up with the PTA board members (each of whom Mrs. Johnson called out in the original) at Kelly's Place and attempts to explain their characters in a positive vein.

The song later inspired an eponymous 1978 motion picture and short-lived 1981 television series, both starring Barbara Eden as the heroine of the story, Mrs. Johnson, who now has a first name: Stella.

In the 1970s, Riley became a born-again Christian, and though she briefly distanced herself from the song when she began singing gospel music, she never excluded it from her concerts, and it was always her most requested and popular number.

In 1984, Riley recorded a sequel song, "Return to Harper Valley", which was also written by Tom T. Hall, but failed to chart.

She also notices both students and adults engaging in risky behavior (smoking, drug use, nudity), but instead of becoming angry, she says a prayer (consistent with Riley's real-life conversion to Christianity), and plans to address the PTA the next day, but in a less confrontational manner than before.