Cleavant Derricks
Musician · 1910–1977 · East Chattanooga, Tennessee
Best known for
Songwriter
The Reverend Cleavant Derricks was an East Chattanooga Black Baptist pastor and prolific gospel composer whose 1937 song “Just a Little Talk with Jesus” became one of the most-recorded gospel songs of the twentieth century. Across his career he wrote more than three hundred songs and edited several song books; the “Just a Little Talk” story — sold to Stamps-Baxter in 1936 for fifty songbooks — became a defining example of how Black composers were squeezed out of the Southern-gospel publishing economy.
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- Born May 13, 1910, in East Chattanooga, Tennessee, to John T. and Ora (Kinamore) Derricks.
- Took early music lessons at the Cadek Conservatory of Music and completed two years at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College (now Tennessee State University) in Nashville.
- Wrote “Just a Little Talk with Jesus” in 1936 and sold it outright to the Stamps-Baxter Music Company in exchange for fifty songbooks, which he then resold for ten cents each.
- Stamps-Baxter published the song on January 1, 1937; it became a Southern-gospel and bluegrass standard, cut by Bill Monroe, the Sunset Quartet, Elvis Presley, the Statesmen Quartet, Loretta Lynn, and many others.
- Pastored Black Baptist congregations and worked as a church builder, choir director, poet, and musician.
- Wrote more than 300 songs across his career and edited several song books.
- Recorded his own version of “Just a Little Talk with Jesus” with his family in 1975 — the first time he ever received royalties from the song.
- Died of colon cancer on April 14, 1977.
- Inducted posthumously into the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame in 1984 and the Southern Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame in 2001.