"I've Got a Little Song Here" features the comic expertise of Phil Leeds, owner of High Class Publishing Company, who finagles Mike Nesmith out of his first song for a cool hundred bucks, promising to give it to teen sensation Joannie Jans. After the 3 'Monkee Men' discover him to be a fraud, Micky poses as super rich studio impresario 'M.D.' in order to get the song back. Being a former child actor, Micky Dolenz was perfect for this impersonation, clearly one of his best, discussing the phoniness and fakery of Hollywood. Leigh Chapman gets her share of laughs as the narcissistic Joannie Jans, who is proud and humble to give 'one of the little people' her autograph (stamped and engraved!), while asking the producer of her new monster movie not to let the vampire get so emotionally involved. Phil Leeds effortlessly steals his scenes as Bernie Class, who hears the title of Mike's song, "Gonna Buy Me a Dog," and proclaims it a ballad! Interestingly enough, Nesmith himself produced his own version (minus vocals, on July 7) of "Gonna Buy Me a Dog," composed by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, more than two weeks before Boyce and Hart produced their own (July 23), which ended up the final track on The Monkees' debut album in Oct. However, the other song featured is a Nesmith original, "Mary, Mary" (recorded July 25, with Glen Campbell on guitar), which didn't appear until their Jan 1967 album, MORE OF THE MONKEES, but would first be released by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band on their Aug 1966 LP EAST-WEST. The fact that one of The Monkees actually wrote such a cool Butterfield song gave them a welcome boost of much needed credibility at the time. Broadcast no. 12 (Nov 28 1966), "I've Got a Little Song Here" was 10th to be filmed, Aug 1-5.
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