Just a Little (The Beau Brummels song)
Released 1965
Format 7″ single
Recorded Coast Recorders, San Francisco, California
Genre Garage rock, folk rock
Length 2:45
Label Autumn
Writer(s) Ron Elliott, Bob Durand
Producer(s) Sylvester “Sly Stone” Stewart
“Just a Little” is a song by American rock group The Beau Brummels. The song is included on the band’s debut album, Introducing the Beau Brummels, and was released as its second single, following “Laugh, Laugh”. “Just a Little” became the band’s highest-charting U.S. single, peaking at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1965. It also reached the top 10 of the charts in Canada and Australia.
Written by guitarist Ron Elliott with frequent collaborator Bob Durand, the song was produced by Sylvester Stewart, later known as Sly Stone. A live version of the song recorded during a 1974 concert was released on the band’s 2000 Live! album. “Just a Little” has been covered by such artists as The Young Rascals, Them, Nils Lofgren, The Smithereens, and Frank Black.
Elliott said that the band’s folk rock sound was a coincidence, not intentional. He explained, “We only had acoustic and electric guitars, so every chance we got, we’d try to add some variety. We couldn’t do it much with playing or style differences, because everybody had limited chops, including myself. The only way you could get variety was to go to a harmonica during the song, or get an acoustic in this space, get different moods that way”.
The song was produced by Sylvester Stewart, later known as Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone. Elliott credited Stone as having a positive influence on the band, and for “pull[ing] a lot of loose ends of the band together”
“Just a Little” debuted at number 81 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in April 1965[4] and peaked two months later at number eight to become the band’s highest-charting single in that country. It spent nine weeks in the top 40 portion of the chart. The song peaked at number four in Canada and number ten in Australia.
A 1965 Billboard review of the single commended its “plaintive lyric and strong vocal”. In his 2000 book Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of ’60s Rock, author Richie Unterberger noted that the song “brought the incipient folk rock of the band to maturation”, adding that “with its vocal blends and mix of electric and acoustic guitars, it anticipated—barely—the official birth of folk rock, usually ascribed to The Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man”, which entered the charts a month after ‘Just a Little'”
Track listing
7″ Vinyl
No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. “Just a Little” Elliott, Durand 2:10
2. “They’ll Make You Cry” Elliott 3:03