Music Legend Candi Staton says “Just Jesus” is All She Needs 

Music Legend Candi Staton says “Just Jesus” is All She Needs

After a dozen gospel albums, almost 30 Billboard R&B chart singles and four Grammy nominations, music legend Candi Staton is back on the gospel charts for the first time in a decade. Her new gospel radio single “Just Jesus” is currently # 32 on the Broadcast Data Systems Gospel Singles chart and winning over radio DJs nationwide. “Just Jesus is a powerful song that speaks to the saint and the sinner of the delivering power of that name,” says Robyn McCollum, Morning Show Host at WIMG-AM in Trenton, NJ. “Candi ministers it with heartfelt conviction that has listeners asking to `play it again9 9. In this season when trials and tribulations mount, `Just Jesus’ points us to the one we can depend on in these tumultuous times.”

The song is featured on Staton’s first-ever praise and worship CD, I Will Sing My Praise to You, on Troy Sneed’s Jacksonville, FL-based Emtro Gospel label. Staton has been carrying the song around in her mind since 1996. “Kathy Meyers and I recorded for the same label and she asked me to come to the studio and sing a song with her,” Staton recalls. “She gave me a copy of the CD and there was this other song on it called `Jesus Just Jesus’ and I fell in love with that song. You know sometimes you start listening to a song and you can’t get it out of your system. That song was like the bottom line to everything for me. Jesus is all I need. Just Jesus! I always like to play old songs when I’m at home. So, one day around the time that I started working on this new CD, I picked that CD up and I kept putting that song on repeat and I said to myself that I need to put this on the new CD.”

The song was written by Staton’s bass player, Anthony Lockett, who was once a member of funk band Cameo, and wrote their 1980 Top Ten smash hit “Sparkle.” Staton laughs, “Anthony didn’t even know I was going to record it until it was already done. I wasn’t even thinking of it as a radio single. Troy Sneed and Tawanda Shamley at Emtro thought it would be a good radio song. The way the CD starts off with that pretty worship music and then segues into the up-tempo praise songs, Just Jesus was a perfect bridge between those two different worship segments.”