ON MY
KNEES
WRITTEN BY DAVID MULLEN, NICOLE C. MULLEN AND MICHAEL OCHS
RECORDED BY JACI VELASQUEZ ON HEAVENLY PLACE (WORD RECORDS, 1996)
PRODUCED BY MARK HEIMERMANN AND PHIL NAISH
ALSO RECORDED BY: NICOLE MULLEN ON GREAT GOSPEL MOMENTS: WOMEN OF GOSPEL
BOB CARLISLE ON SHADES OF GRACE
In 1969, the Gospel Music Association’s Dove Awards were only two years old. The list of winners from that year included names like the Blackwood Brothers, the Oak Ridge Boys and the Speer Family. A promising young writer named Bill Gaither got the nod for Songwriter of the Year. And farther on down the list, a young group called The Four Galileans, featuring lead singer David Velasquez, won the Most Promising New Gospel Talent Award.
Fast forward to the Dove Awards, 1997. David Velasquez’s baby girl Jaci, on the strength of her stunningly successful debut album Heavenly Place, tearfully accepts her very own New Artist of the Year Award at the ripe old age of 17. But it wasn’t just about ‘passing the torch’—it was more like watching a pre-cociously talented young woman light her own.
Jaci Velasquez was a baby-faced teenager when she recorded her first major label release in 1996. She was discovered two years earlier in Houston, Texas by one of Christian music’s top managers, Mike Atkins, who has helped launch the careers of 4HIM and Point of Grace. Jaci is the youngest of six siblings in a Brady Bunch-type blended family— she is the ‘ours’ among the ‘his’ and ‘hers’ from previous marriages. Her father is a former pastor who began a traveling ministry with his wife and daughter in 1989, and Jaci’s first performances were the solos she sang before her father’s sermons. Atkins, intrigued by the big voice coming from the little girl, quickly signed her to an exclusive management deal and brought her to the attention of Word Records.
“We took Jaci out on tour to open for us when she was just 14—she and her mom went on the road with us. And we just couldn’t get over The Voice! We knew she was something special. When she was recording her first record she played some of the rough mixes for us, and I especially remember ‘On My Knees.’ We listened to it and then just said, ‘Well, all right—get ready, girl.’ Because you could tell that it was all just about to explode.”
ANDY CHRISMAN OF 4HIM
Jaci immediately began working on her debut album, and remembers hearing “On My Knees” for the first time during pre-production. “Nicole Mullen, David Mullen and Michael Ochs, the guys that wrote the song, walked in one day and said, ‘Hey, you ought to cut this song on your new release,’” Jaci explains. “So I put my voice on the demo, and then I took off to Michigan for a concert. I was still singing with my parents at that time. And in the middle of the night my mom woke up singing ‘On My Knees.’ It was the weirdest thing! It was like we knew from that first time we heard it that it was going to change our lives.” But right before Jaci’s record was going to be released, Nicole C. Mullen was also entering the studio to work on her first project. When her creative team realized she had ‘given away’ “On My Knees” to another new artist, they told Nicole she needed to get her song back for her own album. Jaci laughs, “I was like, ‘But it’s already on my record—no fair!’ Anyway, it all worked out; and she had ‘Redeemer’ on hers, so she didn’t miss out on a thing!”
Heavenly Place resulted in some impressive accolades for a first-timer. In addition to the New Artist of the Year Dove award, she was also voted Best New Artist in both CRR and CCM’s Reporters polls. She had three other 1997 Dove nominations, including Album of the Year and Inspirational Song of the Year for “On My Knees,” which actually won the prestigious Song of the Year category the following year. All four of the singles released from her album became number one songs and by the end of the year, Heavenly Place was officially certified platinum.
PRAYER TIME
Bow your head . . . and sing along.
“Pray, Pray, Pray”—James Ward
“Pray for Me”—Michael W. Smith
“Pray for Me”—Scott Wesley Brown
“Pray for Me”—B. J. Thomas
“Somebody’s Prayin’”—Ricky Skaggs
“Pray in the USA”—Morgan Cryar
“When God’s People Pray”—Wayne Watson
“Make My Life a Prayer to You”—Keith Green
“Let Us Pray”—Steven Curtis Chapman
“Prayer”—Petra
“This Town”—Rob Frazier
“Pray”—Rebecca St. James
“Why Pray”—Angie Lewis
“Say a Prayer”—Lenny LeBlanc
“I’m Praying For You”—Dick & Mel Tunney
“Down on My Knees”—Susan Ashton
“Have a Talk with God”—Jon Gibson
Jaci also released several top selling albums in the Latin pop market, and her career has continued to grow with unprecedented success at radio, retail and on the road. However the last few years have changed the exuberant, high-spirited teenager into a stronger, perhaps wiser young woman. She has been through some difficult life experiences, with the divorce of her parents when she was nineteen, and her own history of rocky personal relationships. She is on the other side of that now, being a newlywed and having a renewed energy for her career. Asked to describe her life now, Jaci just smiles and says, “It’s all good.”
“I have to tell the truth, when Michael Ochs first came up with the idea of a song with the words ‘on my knees’ in it, David and I just kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Corny.’ But as soon as he started playing the piano and the music got to the place where he sang those words—that’s the only part of the lyric he had—we starting thinking, ‘OK, this could work!’ We were all probably thinking that I might sing it, but I didn’t have a record deal at the time. And when Jaci and her mom heard it, it went right to their hearts, they just knew that this was her song. And I have never regretted it. I do think it was definitely written for her to sing first, she does such an incredible job on it.”
NICOLE C. MULLEN
