"A Little Bit of Soap", written by Bert Berns (aka Bert Russell), was a song, first sung by The Jarmels, reaching #12 in September 1961.
The song has been covered many times since. Paul Davis's rendition reached #52 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1970, and Nigel Olsson's rendition hit #34 in June 1979.
The song, about a breakup and lost love, was sung in a bluesy soul style by the Jarmels. It was followed up in a ballad arrangement by both Davis and Olsson.
While the song was a minor hit in the United States all three times it was released, it reached the Top Ten on the Canadian charts, and Top Twenty in Australia in 1970 for Paul Davis. It was his first charting single release.
"A Little Bit of Soap" was a huge hit in South East Asia when the Hong Kong-based group Cliff Foenander and The Fabulous Echoes released it as a single. It spent 25 weeks at Number 1 in Top Ten Charts in 1963 in South East Asia. Foenander and The Fabulous Echoes also sang the hit in Las Vegas USA in 1964. It made Cliff Foenander a household name in South Asia: Radio Ceylon, the oldest radio station in South Asia, played the Number One hit across the Indian subcontinent.
De La Soul sampled it for a different song with the same name.