Wednesday, April 9, 2025
đĽ Lawmakers DEVASTATE Fani with New Law That Could Leave Her Bankrupt?
Well looks like our favorite "Fani" "What you talking about" Willis could end up bankrupt after lawmakers are passing a bill which folks could change things in GA forever. Georgia lawmakers passed a new system to pay the wrongfully convicted and here is where current POTUS 47 comes in as his case in GA is tied in so with this now we also find out that the Trump election case was added and he could sue her office along with people like Young Thug for who knows how many MILLIONS! Esentially bankrupting her.
Next stop is Gov. Brian Kempâs desk for a signature.
Senate Bill 244, originally inspired by Trumpâs election interference case in Georgia, was later amended to revive the Wrongful Conviction Compensation Act, a stalled House bill that was aimed at providing reparations to people wrongfully incarcerated. House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have faced an uphill battle in their efforts to properly compensate those who have been wrongfully incarcerated. The process is currently done on a case-by-case basis through individual compensation resolutions that must pass through the full legislative process like any other bill. Legislation to standardize the process was initially introduced by Atlanta Democratic Rep. Scott Holcomb in 2022, and re-introduced in 2023, but his efforts have repeatedly been stalled in the Senate by Republican opposition. The version that ultimately emerged as the clock ran out on the 2025 legislative session Friday, sponsored by Alpharetta Republican Sen. Brandon Beach, secured a 35-18 vote in its second pass through the Senate, with all Republicans and the three highest-ranking Senate Democrats voting in support of the legislation. Its passage also marked a final sine die gavel for Beach, a staunch Trump ally who was recently appointed by the president to serve as U.S. Treasurer.
If Gov. Brian Kemp signs the bill into law, it will allow criminal defendants to recoup their legal costs from county prosecuting attorneysâ budgets in cases where the prosecutor is disqualified for personal or professional misconduct. (During Trumpâs election interference case in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified after an appeals court judge found that her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a âsignificant appearance of impropriety.â) Separately, it will establish a new process under Georgia state law for people who have been convicted for crimes they did not commit and later exonerated, allowing administrative law judges to rule on wrongful conviction compensation cases and awarding a standardized rate of $75,000 for each year of incarceration to each exoneree, with an additional $25,000 added for each year spent on death row.
This is the third consecutive biennium that legislators in the House have attempted to reform the system for compensating those who have been wrongfully incarcerated. However, Republican opposition in the Senate particularly from Sen. Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican and former law enforcement officer has repeatedly stalled those efforts. Under current Georgia law, those who have been wrongfully convicted must find a state representative who is willing to sponsor an individual compensation resolution for them and file a claim with Georgiaâs Claims Advisory Board. Those resolutions then go through the full legislative process and must pass committees and floor votes in both the House and Senate before they can take effect, but those efforts too have routinely died in the Senate in recent years.
Though Robertson emphasized that he was still not fully on board with the legislation aimed at compensating the wrongfully convicted, he conceded that the current system was in need of reform in a speech on the final day of the 2025 legislative session. âWhat I realized is the process is not a good process,â Robertson said, but vowed to continue work shopping the wrongful conviction component of the bill after the 2025 legislative session concludes. âIâm going to ask you today to support the senator from the 21st and vote for this legislation, and in the off-season, weâll tackle the other thing thatâs attached to it and weâll come up with a process that works,â he continued, addressing his Senate colleagues. âSupport this bill, get it across, and I promise you the fightâs not over.â Democrats also condemned the original language of the bill, arguing that it could have a disproportionate impact on smaller counties with more limited budgets, and discourage prosecutors from tackling complex or high-profile cases.
But Holcomb celebrated its passage. âThis will give hope to real people whose lives were devastated and destroyed by a wrongful conviction, and it gives them a path to get some measure of compensation so they can restart their lives,â he said. âIâm very grateful for that. This is a major legislative achievement that comes out of this session.â Though he acknowledged that there is no way to fully undo a wrongful conviction, he hopes that the new system will bring equality and efficiency to the process. âThere isnât a person alive who would trade the money that these individuals are receiving for what happened to them in terms of being locked up in our stateâs prisons, for usually for decades of their lives for something that they didnât do,â he said. âThis is a path to provide some remedy. Itâs an inadequate remedy in terms of nothing can bring back those years, but itâs an adequate remedy in terms of dollars that will really help them through the remaining years of their lives.â
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
P.Diddy CHECK To KILL Tupac LEAKED Online?
Well now that finally there has been an arrest in the now 27 year old cold case of the murder of rap megastar Tupac Shakur. The person arrested as we know is Keefe D who confessed to being part of the hit and he said he handed the weapon used in the murder to his cousin Orlando Anderson. But were they paid to have pac killed? Now the claims is that P. Diddy paid for the NYC 94 hit on PAC and that money he paid was why Keefe D and his crew ended up executing PAC in 1996 after the initial attempt on his life didn't go as planned and PAC survived the 94 attempt on his life.
Now it's being said a possible copy of the check provided by P. Diddy might have leaked online? Well let's look at this video below addressing this matter further in a way that well is pretty damning on Diddy. Personally I feel Sean Combs known as Diddy had an involvement in both Tupac & Biggies murders and the shooter was Orlando Anderson and his people from the crip gang sect he belonged too. Orlando Anderson was also killed months after Tupac died. Now I've thought this since the late 90's but not until Keefe D came forward did it all start to unravel.
This video is very interesting and revealing on what could very well be 100% correct in how it ties Combs to the shootings, and well I think it's time justice comes for the BADBOY executive who indeed belongs investigated and if found guilty should be sent ironically to DEATH ROW for his crimes on both icons losing their lives. I've hated Sean Combs since I first laid eyes on him as he looks like a lying snake in my opinion.
Again if this is proven he belongs rotting in prison on Death Row...
While I never Met Tupac in person he's my all time favorite artist/rapper and I did also love Biggies music and was a fan of his, and got to meet him back after "Ready 2 Die" came out at a restaurant here near Miami Airport as he and members of Junior Mafia were here to represent at a show in South Beach to promote his "Ready to Die" album. He was from my only encounter with him as a very nice guy and while I was a kid he spoke to me on the level, and had this to say to me... "Don't think you can't be great even if you're family is poor young man stay positive... Look at me and how I've made it even tho I wasn't born rich." He was not the evil person in my opinion or how some people claimed.
But might have been stuck in the middle of this beef with Tupac because of Combs. So I do hope the law catches whoever killed these two icons. Hope justice is served once and for all and these men get to finally rest in peace.
God bless the dead...
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Prayers for a speedy recovery to RAP LEGEND Krayzie Bone!
The music industry and beyond is sending prayers and best wishes to Krayzie Bone, one of the original members of legendary group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony which is by far the greates Rap Group in Cleveland history. He went to the hospital after coughing up blood, and found out that a lung artery was leaking. Krayzie Bone who's real name is Anthony Henderson, is tackling a condition known as sarcoidosis (an inflammatory disease in his organs) which exacerbates his current health struggles.
In 2016, Krayzie Bone told TMZ that he was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, which is âcharacterized by the growth of inflammatory cellsâ known as granulomas that are commonly found in the lungs and lymph nodes, but can be found anywhere in the body, according to the Mayo Clinic.
It is unclear if Krayzie Bone's recent hospitalization is related to his condition, though member Layzie Bone did ask for prayers on Tuesday and said an update would be forthcoming.
"In this challenging moment, as the immediate and Bone thugs family rallies behind my brother, we humbly ask for a moment of privacy. Our family is facing the unexpected hospitalization of Krayzie Bone with strength, and your prayers are a beacon of hope," he wrote on Instagram. "Soon, weâll share an update, but for now, let us come together and keep our love and thoughts focused on his recovery.
The group is regarded as one of the greatest hip-hop/rap groups of all time with hits âThuggish Ruggish Bone,â â1st of tha Monthâ and âEast 1999, Rebirth (With Thin C), Thug Luv (With 2pac)â
The Grammy-winning group is the only rap group to have collaborated with Tupac Shakur, the Notorious B.I.G., Big Pun and Eazy-E before they died.
Krayzie Bone also pursued a solo career in the late '90s with the release of his debut studio album Thug Mentality 1999. The project was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Saturday, September 2, 2023
Jimmy Buffett Rest in Peace He was 76
Singer and songwriter Jimmy Buffett who gained millions of fans world wide with his folksy tales of living and loving on tropical sandy beaches, frozen concoction in hand, died Friday. He was 76.
The statement didn't say where Buffett died or provide a cause of death. The singer had rescheduled concerts in May, and Buffett said on social media that he had been hospitalized.
The song went on to inspire a brand, which included restaurants and resorts, a radio station, clothing and apparel, as well as food and drink items like beer, tequila, salad dressings and salsa. It also helped make him a billionaire, with Forbes this month placing his real-time net worth at $1 billion.
But in an apparent nod to his business pursuits in the song âA Pirate Looks at Forty,â Buffett sang that he âmade enough money to buy Miami, but I pissed it away so fast. Never meant to last, never meant to last.â
Buffett was nominated for two Grammy Awards, for âHey Good Lookinââ a cover of the Hank Williams classic and âItâs Five OâClock Somewhere,â a duet with country superstar Alan Jackson.
Elton John was among several stars to pay tribute to Buffett, calling him a âunique and treasured entertainer,â in a post on Instagram Stories. âHis fans adored him and he never let them down. This is the saddest of news, a lovely man gone way too soon,â John wrote. Actor Miles Teller also posted several photos of him with the singer on X, formerly known as Twitter. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys also took to X, where he wrote, âLove and Mercy, Jimmy Buffett.â
Fans, affectionately dubbed âParrotheads,â were also quick to pay tribute to the singer, who was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on Christmas Day 1946. He was brought up mainly in Mobile, Alabama. Many cited âOne Particular Harborâ when remembering the singer: âBut thereâs one particular harbor/ So far yet so near/ Where I see the days as they fade away/ And finally disappear.â
After learning guitar at college he attended Alabama's Auburn University before graduating from the University of Southern Mississippi he began busking on the streets of New Orleans before going on to form his first band. He later moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to work for Billboard Magazine and try his luck as a singer, the biography says. But it was in Key West, Florida, in the 1970s, that Buffett âfound his true voice,â according to his website.
Fellow country singer Jerry Jeff Walker first let him stay at his Coconut Grove home, and then they drove in a 1947 Packard to Key West, he told graduating students at the University of Miami, where he received an honorary doctorate in music in May 2015.
âNeedless to say, my life took a big and wonderful change towards South Florida, which has a lot to do with why Iâm standing here today,â he said, while wearing flip-flops below the academic robes. Touring and recording with the Coral Reefer Band, he would go on to make 27 studio albums four went platinum and eight gold in a career that spanned more than five decades.
Buffett also appeared on TV and movies, wrote fiction and nonfiction books, including âTales from Margaritaville,â âA Pirate Looks At Fifty,â as well as âWhere Is Joe Merchant?,â and his work became a musical.
He popped up in the film âJurassic Worldâ as ârunning park visitor with margarita drinks,â as IMDB put it. He carried two, one in each hand. And Buffett guest-starred in the Tom Selleck show âBlue Bloods,â playing both himself and a virtual double who posed as the singer and scammed people.
A Broadway show based on his music, âJimmy Buffettâs Escape to Margaritaville,â debuted in 2017. In a recent interview, Buffett said his life-long love of reading came from his mother, Mary Lorraine Buffett, who also wanted him to be a writer. âI think she knew that for us to read we would see the world as a bigger place than where we grew up, which was a great gift,â he said.
He also dedicated some of his time to charity, starting the âSave the Manatee Club,â a nonprofit group that seeks to protect the large, docile marine mammals from boating injuries and harm by the actions of people.
In a 2017 interview with Menâs Journal, Buffett was asked what remained on his bucket list. âI have four things: Learn to hang ten. Go to space. Go to Pitcairn Island, where my Buffett ancestors are from. And go to Antarctica,â he said.
The singer is survived by his wife, Jane Slagsvol, two daughters, Savannah and Sarah, and son, Cameron.
Friday, July 21, 2023
Iconic singer Tony Bennett passes away at aged 96 Rest in Peace
Tony Bennett, a singer whose melodic clarity, jazz-influenced phrasing, audience-embracing persona and warm, deceptively simple interpretations of musical standards helped spread the American songbook around the world and won him generations of fans, died on Friday at his home of many decades in Manhattan.
Mr. Bennett learned he had Alzheimerâs disease in 2016, his wife, Susan Benedetto, told AARP The Magazine in February 2021. But he continued to perform and record despite his illness; his last public performance was in August 2021, when he appeared with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall in a show titled âOne Last Time.â
Mr. Bennettâs career of more than 70 years was remarkable not only for its longevity, but also for its consistency. In hundreds of concerts and club dates and more than 150 recordings, he devoted himself to preserving the classic American popular song, as written by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hammerstein and others.
From his initial success as a jazzy crooner who wowed audiences at the Paramount in Times Square in the early 1950s, through his late-in-life duets with younger singers gleaned from a range of genres and generations most notably Lady Gaga, with whom he recorded albums in 2014 and 2021 and toured in 2015 he was an active promoter of both songwriting and entertaining as timeless, noble pursuits.
Mr. Bennett stubbornly resisted record producers who urged gimmick songs on him, or, in the 1960s and early â70s, who were sure that rock ânâ roll had relegated the music he preferred to a dusty bin perused only by a dwindling population of the elderly and nostalgic.
Instead, he followed in the musical path of the greatest American pop singers of the 20th century Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra and carried the torch for them into the 21st. He reached the height of stardom in 1962 with a celebrated concert at Carnegie Hall and the release of his signature song, âI Left My Heart in San Francisco.â And though he saw his popularity wane with the onset of rock and his career went through a trough in the 1970s, when professional difficulties were exacerbated by a failing marriage and drug problems, he was, in the end, more than vindicated in his musical judgment.
âI wanted to sing the great songs, songs that I felt really mattered to people,â he said in âThe Good Lifeâ (1998), an autobiography written with Will Friedwald. Itâs hard to overstate Mr. Bennettâs lasting appeal. He was still singing âSan Franciscoâ which led many people to think he was a native of that city, though he was actually a through-and-through New Yorker more than half a century later. He sang on Ed Sullivanâs show and David Lettermanâs. He sang with Rosemary Clooney when she was in her 20s, and Celine Dion when she was in her 20s.
He made his film debut in 1966, in a critically reviled Hollywood story, âThe Oscar,â playing a man betrayed by an old friend. And though he did not pursue an acting career, decades later he was playing himself in movies like the Robert De Niro-Billy Crystal gangster comedy âAnalyze Thisâ and the Jim Carrey vehicle âBruce Almighty.â He was 64 when he appeared as a cartoon version of himself on âThe Simpsons.â He was 82 when he appeared on the HBO series âEntourage,â performing one of his trademark songs, âThe Good Life.â
A lifelong liberal Democrat, Mr. Bennett participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march in 1965, and, along with Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr. and others, performed at the Stars for Freedom rally on the City of St. Jude campus on the outskirts of Montgomery on March 24, the night before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the address that came to be known as the âHow Long? Not Longâ speech. At the conclusion of the march, Viola Liuzzo, a volunteer from Michigan, drove Mr. Bennett to the airport; she was murdered later that day by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Mr. Bennett also performed for Nelson Mandela, then the president of South Africa, during his state visit to England in 1996. He sang at the White House for John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, and at Buckingham Palace at Queen Elizabeth IIâs 50th anniversary jubilee.
An âElusiveâ Voice
He won his first two Grammy Awards, for âSan Francisco,â in 1963, and his last, for the album âLove for Sale,â with Lady Gaga, last year. Altogether there were 20 of them, including, in 2001, a lifetime achievement award. By some estimates, he sold more than 60 million records.
The talent that spawned this success and popularity was not so easy to define. Neither a fluid singer nor an especially powerful one, he did not have the mellifluous timbre of Crosby or the rakish swing of Sinatra. If Armstrongâs tone was distinctively gravelly, Mr. Bennettâs wasnât quite; âsandyâ was more like it. Almost no one denied that his voice was appealing, but critics strove mightily to describe it, and then to justify its appeal.
âThe voice that is the basic tool of Mr. Bennettâs trade is small, thin and somewhat hoarse,â John S. Wilson wrote in The New York Times in 1962. âBut he uses it shrewdly and with a skillful lack of pretension.â
In a 1974 profile, Whitney Balliett, the longtime jazz critic for The New Yorker, called Mr. Bennett âan elusive singer.â âHe can be a belter who reaches rocking fortissimos,â Mr. Balliett wrote. âHe drives a ballad as intensely and intimately as Sinatra. He can be a lilting, glancing jazz singer. He can be a low-key, searching supper-club performer.â But, he added, âBennettâs voice binds all his vocal selves together.â Most simply, perhaps, the composer and critic Alec Wilder said about Mr. Bennettâs voice, âThere is a quality about it that lets you in.â
Indeed, what many listeners (including the critics) discovered about Mr. Bennett, and what they responded to, was something intangible: the care with which he treated both the song and the audience.
He had a storytellerâs grace with a lyric, a jazzmanâs sureness with a melody, and in his finest performances he delivered them with a party giverâs welcome, a palpable and infectious affability. In his presentation, the songs he loved and sang âJust in Time,â âThe Best Is Yet to Come,â âRags to Richesâ and âI Wanna Be Around,â to name a handful of his emblematic hits became engaging, life-embracing parables.
Frank Sinatra, whom Mr. Bennett counted as a mentor and friend, once put it another way. âFor my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business,â he told Life magazine in 1965. âHe excites me when I watch him. He moves me. Heâs the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.â Mr. Bennett passed through life with as unscathed a public image as it is possible for a celebrity to have. Finding even mild criticism of him in reviews and interviews is no mean feat, and even his outspoken liberalism generally failed to attract vitriol from the right. (An exception was his call, after the drug-related deaths of Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston, for the legalization of drugs, a view loudly denounced by William J. Bennett, the former drug czar, among others.)
With the possible exception of his former wives, everyone, it seemed, loved Tony Bennett. Skeptical journalists would occasionally try to pierce what they perceived as his perfect veneer, but they generally discovered that there wasnât much to pierce.
âBennett is outrageous,â Simon Hattenstone, a reporter for The Guardian, wrote in 2002. âHe mythologizes himself, name-drops every time he opens his mouth, directs you to his altruism, is self-congratulatory to the point of indecency. He should be intolerable, but heâs one of the sweetest, most humble men Iâve ever met.â
Son of Queens
Anthony Dominick Benedetto was born on Aug. 3, 1926, in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, and grew up in that borough in working-class Astoria. His father, Giovanni, had emigrated from Calabria, in southern Italy, at age 11. His mother, Anna (Suraci) Benedetto, was born in New York in 1899, having made the sea journey from Italy in the womb. Their marriage was arranged. Giovanni and Anna were cousins; their mothers were sisters.
In New York, where Giovanni Benedetto became John, he was a grocer, but beleaguered by poor health and often unable to work. Anna was a factory seamstress and took in additional sewing to support the family. Anthony was their third child, their second son, and the first of any Benedetto to be born in a hospital. Giovanni, who sang Italian folk songs to his children âMy father inspired my love for music,â Mr. Bennett wrote in his autobiography died when Anthony was 10.
Anthony sang from an early age, and drew and painted, too. He would become a creditable painter as an adult, mostly landscapes and still lifes in watercolors and oils and portraits of musicians he admired, signing his paintings âBenedetto.â His first music teacher arranged for him to sing alongside Mayor Fiorello La Guardia at the opening of the Triborough Bridge (now the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge) in 1936.
For a time he attended the High School for Industrial Arts (now called the High School of Art and Design) in Manhattan, but he never graduated. He dropped out and found work as a copy boy for The Associated Press, in a laundry and as an elevator operator.
âI couldnât figure out how to get the elevator to stop at the right place,â he recalled. âPeople ended up having to crawl out between floors.â
At night he performed at amateur shows and worked as a singing waiter. He had just begun to get paying work as a singer, using the stage name Joe Bari, when he was drafted.
He arrived in Europe toward the end of World War II, serving in Germany in the infantry. He spent time on the front lines, an experience he described as âa front-row seat in hell,â and was among the troops who arrived to liberate the prisoners at the Landsberg concentration camp, a subcamp of Dachau.
After Germany surrendered, Mr. Bennett was part of the occupying forces, assigned to special services, where he ended up as a singer with Army bands and for a time was featured in a ragtag version of the musical âOn the Townâ directed by Arthur Penn, who would go on to direct âBonnie and Clydeâ and other notable movies in the opera house in Wiesbaden.
He returned to New York in August 1946 and set about beginning a career as a musician. On the G.I. Bill, he took classes at the American Theater Wing, which he later said helped teach him how to tell a story in song. He sang in nightclubs in Manhattan and Queens.
A series of breaks followed. He appeared on the radio show âArthur Godfreyâs Talent Scouts,â the âAmerican Idolâ of its day. (The competition was won by Rosemary Clooney.) There are different versions of the biggest break in Mr. Bennettâs early career, but as he told it in âThe Good Life,â he had been singing occasionally at a club in Greenwich Village where the owner had offered Pearl Bailey a gig as the headliner; she agreed, but only on the condition that Joe Bari stayed on the bill.
When Bob Hope came down to take in Ms. Baileyâs act, he liked Joe Bari so much that he asked him to open for him at the Paramount Theater. Hope had a condition, however: He didnât like the name Joe Bari, and insisted it be changed. Dismissing the name Anthony Benedetto as too long to fit on a marquee, Hope christened the young singer Tony Bennett.
The Hits Roll In
The producer Mitch Miller signed Mr. Bennett to Columbia Records in 1950; âBoulevard of Broken Dreamsâ was his first single. Miller was known for his hit-making prowess, a gift that often involved matching talented singers with novelty songs or having them cover hits by others, for which he was criticized by more serious music fans and sometimes by the singers themselves.
He and Mr. Bennett had a contentious relationship. Mr. Bennett resisted his attempts at gimmickry; Miller, who believed that the producer and not the singer was in charge of a recording, applied his authority. Still, together they achieved grand success.
By mid-1951, Mr. Bennett had his first No. 1 hit, âBecause of You.â That same year, his version of the Hank Williams ballad âCold, Cold Heartâ also hit No. 1; three years after Williams died in 1953, Mr. Bennett performed it in his honor at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
Other trademark songs followed: âRags to Richesâ in 1953; âStranger in Paradise,â from the Broadway show âKismet,â also in 1953; Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Greenâs âJust in Time,â from the show âBells Are Ringing,â in 1956. That same year, Mr. Bennett was host of his own television variety show, a summer replacement for a similar show that starred another popular Italian American crooner, Perry Como. In 1958, he recorded two albums with the Count Basie band, introducing him to the jazz audience.
In the 1950s, Mr. Bennett toured for the first time, played Las Vegas for the first time and got married for the first time, to Patricia Beech, a fan who had seen him perform in Cleveland. The marriage would flounder in the 1960s, overwhelmed by Mr. Bennettâs perpetual touring, but their two sons would end up playing roles in Mr. Bennettâs career: the older one, DâAndrea, known as Danny, became his fatherâs manager, and Daegal, known as Dae, became a music producer and recording engineer.
In July 1961, Mr. Bennett was performing in Hot Springs, Ark., and about to head to the West Coast when Ralph Sharon, his longtime pianist, played him a song written by George Cory and Douglass Cross that had been moldering in a drawer for two years. Mr. Sharon and Mr. Bennett decided that it would be perfect for their next date, at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, and it was.
They recorded the song of course it was âI Left My Heart in San Franciscoâ six months later, in January 1962. It won Mr. Bennett his first two Grammys, for best male solo performance and record of the year, and worldwide fame. In âThe Good Life,â he wrote that he was often asked if he ever tired of singing it.
âI answer, âDo you ever get tired of making love?ââ he wrote.
Just five months later, Mr. Bennett performed at Carnegie Hall with Mr. Sharon and a small orchestra. He got sensational reviews though The Timesâs was measured and the recording of the concert is now considered a classic.
But as the 1960s proceeded and rock ânâ roll became dominant, Mr. Bennettâs popularity began to slip. In 1969, he succumbed to the pressure of the new president of Columbia Records, Clive Davis, to record his versions of contemporary songs, and the result, âTony Sings the Great Hits of Today!â including the Beatlesâ âEleanor Rigbyâ and âSomethingâ was a musical calamity, a record that Mr. Bennett would later tell an interviewer made him vomit.
His relationship with Columbia soured further and finally ended, and by the middle of the 1970s Mr. Bennett had formed his own company, Improv Records, on which he recorded the first of two of his most critically admired albums, duets with the jazz pianist Bill Evans. (The second one was released on Evansâs label, Fantasy.) Together the two opened the Newport Jazz Festival, which had moved to New York, at Carnegie Hall in 1976.
Improv went out of business in 1977, and without a recording contract Mr. Bennett relied more and more on Las Vegas, then in decline, for regular work. His mother died that year, and the profligate life he had been living in Beverly Hills caught up with him; the Internal Revenue Service was threatening to take his house. His second marriage, a tumultuous one to the actress Sandra Grant, collapsed she would later say that she would have been better off if she had married her previous boyfriend, Joe DiMaggio and he had begun using marijuana and cocaine heavily.
One day in 1979, high and in a panic, he took a bath to calm down and nearly died in the tub. In later years he would play down the seriousness of the event, but he wrote about it in âThe Good Life,â describing what he called a near-death experience: âA golden light enveloped me in a warm glow. It was quite peaceful; in fact, I had the sense that I was about to embark on a very compelling journey. But suddenly I was jolted out of the vision. The tub was overflowing and Sandra was standing above me. Sheâd heard the water running for too long, and when she came in I wasnât breathing. She pounded on my chest and literally brought me back to life.â
Mr. Bennett turned to his older son for help. Danny Bennett took over the management of his career, aiming to have the American musical standards that were his strength, and his handling of them, perceived as hip by a new generation.
Somewhat surprisingly, the strategy took hold. An article in Spin magazine, which was founded in 1985, declared Mr. Bennett and James Brown as the two foremost influences on rock ânâ roll, and the magazine followed up with a long, admiring profile.
A Career Revival
Encouraged by executive changes at Columbia Records, Mr. Bennett returned to the Columbia fold in 1985. The next year he released the album âThe Art of Excellence.â WBCN in Boston became the first rock station to give it regular airplay. Released in the emerging CD format, it spurred the sales of Mr. Bennettâs back catalog as music fans began replacing their vinyl records with CDs.
In 1993, Mr. Bennett was a presenter, along with two members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, at MTVâs Video Music Awards. The next year he gave an hourlong performance for MTVâs âUnpluggedâ series, which included duets with K.D. Lang (with whom he would later tour) and Elvis Costello. The recording of the show won the Grammy for album of the year.
The revival of Mr. Bennettâs career was complete. Not only had he returned to the kind of popularity he had enjoyed 40 years earlier, but he had also been accepted by an entirely new audience.
He recorded albums that honored musicians he admired â Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday â and he collaborated on standards with singers half, or less than half, his age. On the 2006 album âDuets: An American Classic,â he sang âIf I Ruled the Worldâ with Ms. Dion, âSmileâ with Barbra Streisand and âFor Once in My Lifeâ with Stevie Wonder, and revisited his first Columbia single, âBoulevard of Broken Dreams,â with Sting. Five years later, on âDuets II,â his collaborators included Aretha Franklin, Queen Latifah, Willie Nelson and Ms. Winehouse.
As the century changed, he was once again touring, giving up to 200 performances a year, and recording prolifically.
In 2007 Mr. Bennett married a third time, to his longtime companion, Susan Crow, a teacher four decades his junior whom he had met in the late 1980s. Together they started a foundation, Exploring the Arts, that supports arts education in schools, and financed the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, a public high school in Queens.
Mr. Bennett had lived in the same Manhattan apartment, where he died, for most of his adult life, except for a few years in Los Angeles and London, Ms. Weiner, his publicist, said. He is survived by his wife; his sons, Danny and Dae; his daughters, Johanna and Antonia Bennett; and 9 grandchildren.
If there was a magical quality to Mr. Bennettâs life, as suggested by David Evanier in a glowing 2011 biography, âAll the Things You Are: The Life of Tony Bennett,â it is encapsulated by a story Mr. Bennett told to Whitney Balliett in 1974.
âI like the funny things in life that could only happen to me now,â he said. âOnce, when I was singing Kurt Weillâs âLost in the Starsâ in the Hollywood Bowl with Basieâs band and Buddy Rich on drums, a shooting star went falling through the sky right over my head and everyone was talking about it, and the next morning the phone rang and it was Ray Charles, who Iâd never met, calling from New York. He said, âHey, Tony, howâd you do that, man?â and hung up.â
An earlier version of this obituary misstated the surname of Mr. Bennettâs wife. She is Susan Benedetto, not Susan Bennett.
An earlier version of this obituary misstated who wrote the lyrics for the song âJust in Time.â It was Betty Comden and Adolph Green, not Sammy Cahn.