<\/p>\n
In the fall of 1968, Texas-born Jeannie C. Riley became the first woman to get a single to the top of both the Hot\u00a0100 pop chart and the Hot Country Singles chart: \u201cHarper Valley PTA<\/a>,\u201d a sassy story-song about a widowed mother feeling herself\u2014scandalizing her hometown in miniskirts and clapping back at her detractors<\/a>, the \u201cHarper Valley hypocrites.\u201d While it\u2019s tempting to call Riley\u2019s debut single and biggest hit a country \u201ccrossover,\u201d it didn\u2019t really cross over. It broke at pop and country radio stations virtually simultaneously\u2014in fact, it got to No.\u00a01 on the Hot\u00a0100<\/a> a little faster than the Country chart<\/a> and even held off the Beatles\u2019 \u201cHey Jude\u201d from No.\u00a01 for a week. \u201cHarper Valley PTA\u201d was a cross-cultural sensation, a twangy Southern take on the counterculture. From the jump, it was as much pop as country.<\/p>\n