By:Cleavant Derricks · Source Recording: Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys (1991)
By:Cleavant Derricks · Source Recording:Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys (1991)
“Just a Little Talk With Jesus” is a gospel song written by the Reverend Cleavant Derricks, a Black Baptist minister and songwriter from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Derricks wrote it during the Depression years and, by a much-repeated account, sold it to the Stamps-Baxter publishing company in exchange for fifty songbooks, which he then sold himself for a dime apiece.
The song may draw on older, anonymous gospel and spiritual material, but it was Derricks’s version, published in the late 1930s, that took hold. Its message is direct and comforting — that prayer, a little talk with Jesus, sets troubles right — and its bright, call-and-response chorus made it a favorite of gospel quartets.
The song became a standard across gospel, country, and bluegrass; a recording by the Oak Ridge Boys later won a Grammy. The version heard here is by Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, drawn from Monroe’s deep catalog of sacred song.
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