Music industry titans team up for charity event

Entertainment industry giants, including producers Dallas Austin and DeVyne Stephens; vocal coach Jan Smith (whose clients include Usher and Justin Bieber); Ludacris' manager, Chaka Zulu; longtime radio personality Frank Ski and HLN personality and country singer Robin Meade, are teaming up for the annual Best Cellars Dinner. The event is for the T.J. Martell Foundation, which benefits cancer and AIDS research.

The event starts at 6 p.m. Sept. 13 at the InterContinental hotel in Buckhead. Over the past 39 years, the organization, based in New York with divisions in Nashville, Tenn., and Los Angeles, has raised more than $260 million. The Atlanta event specifically benefits Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute.

“As the entertainment industry’s premier annual event in Atlanta, it is the only event where Atlanta’s rap, country, gospel, rock, R&B and jazz communities all gather together for one evening to raise awareness for innovative research,” organizers said.

The chairman emeritus is entertainment super-lawyer Joel Katz, who recently shared his inspirational story as a keynote speaker at Kennesaw State University's summer commencement. Event chairs are Bea Perez, Rod Windley and Zulu.

At a recent kickoff event, Katz promised there would be lots of fun, plenty of great wine, and a minimum of official remarks delivered from the podium during the night of the fundraiser.

“There won’t be a lot of yip-yap,” he quipped.

The T.J. Martell Foundation was launched in memory of T.J. Martell, who died at age 19 of leukemia in 1975. His father, music industry executive Tony Martell, launched the foundation to honor T.J.'s dying wish that "no one else experience what I am going through."