Georgia on My Mind

"Georgia on My Mind" is a song by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell, closely associated with the cover version by Ray Charles, a native of Georgia, who recorded it for his 1960 album The Genius Hits the Road. It became the official state song of Georgia in 1979.

Original version

The song was written in 1930 by Hoagy Carmichael (music) and Stuart Gorrell (lyrics). Although it is frequently asserted that the lyrics were written not about the state of Georgia, but rather for Carmichael's sister, Georgia Carmichael, Hoagy Carmichael himself contradicted this view with his recounting of the origin of the song in his second autobiography Sometimes I Wonder. Carmichael wrote that the song was composed when bandleader Frankie Trumbauer suggested that he write about the state of Georgia. According to Carmichael, Trumbauer also suggested the opening lyrics should be "Georgia, Georgia ...", with the remaining lyrics coming from Gorell. Carmichael made no mention at all of his sister in his telling of the song's genesis.

Ray Charles

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Raymond Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), professionally known as Ray Charles, was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and composer. He was sometimes referred to as "The Genius", and was also nicknamed "The High Priest of Soul".

He pioneered the genre of soul music during the 1950s by combining rhythm and blues, Gospel, and blues styles into the music he recorded for Atlantic Records. He also contributed to the racial integration of country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his two Modern Sounds albums. While he was with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be granted artistic control by a mainstream record company.

Charles was blind from the age of seven. Charles cited Nat King Cole as a primary influence, but his music was also influenced by jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, and country artists of the day, including Art Tatum, Louis Jordan, Charles Brown, and Louis Armstrong. Charles' playing reflected influences from country blues, barrelhouse, and stride piano styles. He had strong ties to Quincy Jones, who often cared for him and showed him the ropes of the "music club industry."

Michael Bublé

Michael Steven Bublé (/buːˈbleɪ/; boo-BLAY; born 9 September 1975) is a Canadian singer, songwriter and actor. He became a naturalized Italian citizen in 2005. He has won several awards, including four Grammy Awards and multiple Juno Awards.

His first album reached the top ten in Canada and the UK. He found a worldwide audience with his 2005 album It's Time, and his 2007 album Call Me Irresponsible which reached number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, the UK Albums Chart, the US Billboard 200 albums chart, the Australian ARIA Albums Chart and several European charts.

Bublé's 2009 album Crazy Love debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 after three days of sales, and remained there for two weeks. It was also his fourth number one album on Billboard's Top Jazz Albums chart. His 2011 holiday album, Christmas, was in first place on the Billboard 200 for the final four weeks of 2011 and the first week of 2012, totalling five weeks atop the chart, it also made the Top 5 in the United Kingdom. With this, Christmas became his third-consecutive number-one album on the chart. To Be Loved was released in April 2013.

Annie Lennox

Annie Lennox, OBE (born 25 December 1954), born Ann Lennox, is a Scottish singer, songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving moderate success in the late 1970s as part of the new wave band The Tourists, she and fellow musician David A. Stewart went on to achieve major international success in the 1980s as Eurythmics. With a total of eight Brit Awards, including Best British Female Artist six times, Lennox has won more than any other female artist. She has also been named the "Brits Champion of Champions".

Lennox embarked on a solo career in 1992 with her debut album, Diva, which produced several hit singles including "Why" and "Walking on Broken Glass". To date, she has released six solo studio albums and a compilation album, The Annie Lennox Collection (2009). Aside from her eight Brit Awards, she has also collected four Grammy Awards and an MTV Video Music Award. In 2002, Lennox received a Billboard Century Award; the highest accolade from Billboard Magazine. In 2004, she won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Into the West", written for the soundtrack to the feature film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Jamie Foxx

Eric Marlon Bishop (born December 13, 1967), known professionally as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, singer, and comedian. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, for his work in the 2004 biographical film Ray. The same year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the action film Collateral.

Other prominent acting roles include the title role in the film Django Unchained (2012), the supervillain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and William Stacks in the 2014 version of Annie. Foxx also starred in the 1990-1994 sketch comedy show In Living Color and his own television show from 1996 to 2001, the sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, in which he played Jamie King Jr.

Foxx is also a Grammy Award-winning musician, producing four albums which have charted highly on the US Billboard 200: Unpredictable (2005), which topped the chart, Intuition (2008), Best Night of My Life (2010), and Hollywood: A Story of a Dozen Roses (2015).