Magic 99 Favourites

One of our Magic 99 Legends, Ray Charles was a leading black entertainer billed as “the Genius.” He was a pianist, singer, composer, and bandleader.  

Van Morrison is a Grammy Award-winner Northern Irish singer, songwriter, author, poet and multi-instrumentalist, who has been a professional musician since the late 1950s.

One of Magic 99's Legends, Tony Bennett is a consummate performer and singer of popular music, standards and jazz.

After having achieved artistic and commercial success in the 1950s and early 1960s, his career suffered an extended downturn during the height of the rock music era. Bennett staged a comeback, however, in the late 1980s and 1990s, expanding his audience to a younger generation while keeping his musical style intact. He remains a popular and critically praised recording artist and concert performer in the 2000s. 

John Mayer began his career performing mainly acoustic rock and pop, but gradually began a transition towards the blues genre in 2005. Since then, he’s collaborated with renowned blues artists such as B. B. King, Buddy Guy, and Eric Clapton, and by forming the John Mayer Trio. The blues influence can be heard on his album Continuum, released in September 2006. At the 49th Annual Grammy Awards in 2007 Mayer won Best Pop Vocal Album for Continuum and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Waiting on the World to Change".

Natalie Cole is an influential singer-songwriter and performer who has won eight Grammy Awards throughout her career. She achieved success in her early career as an R&B star, but smoothly changed her repertoire towards a more jazzy oriented musical style since the early 90's. 

With his distinctive, raspy voice, Rod Stewart can be recognized all over the airways. 

His career in its fifth decade, Stewart has achieved numerous hit singles worldwide, most notably in the UK, where he has garnered six consecutive number one albums and his tally of 62 hit singles include 24 that reached the top 10, six of which gained the number one position. In 1971 one of his most-known hit single is Maggie May, was named as one of the ‘500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll’. 

In the summer of 2003, aged just 18 and still studying at the Brit School of Performing Arts in leafy Surrey, no-one, least of all Katie, would have predicted what the next few years would hold for the teenager. 

Mike Batt of ‘The Wombles’ having visited the Performing Arts school looking for new fame discovered Katie and immediately signed her up to his Dramatico label. Four years later, Katie has sold more than 7.5 million albums becoming, in 2006, the year’s best selling British female in the world along the way.

She's the daughter of internationally renowned musician Ravi Shankar, but Norah Jones has still managed to make a name for herself in the music industry, all on her own.

This Canadian born jazz sensation has released 10 albums since she burst onto the music scene in 1993. She has received two Grammy Awards, a Juno and an honorary PhD in fine arts from the University of Victoria. Yeah, you could say she's made it.

There's nobody like him.

With a career that spans nearly seven decades, he has been deemed a legend in the industry of music. And rightly so. Frank Sinatra is one of the most celebrated vocalists of all time.

His career began in his early twenties when he received his first break singing with a local band in Hoboken, New Jersey. By 1939, Old Blue Eyes was singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and in 1942 recorded his first solo album. During this time he also began making his first film appearances.