Yeah, That's the Ticket

SOUND BITES ''Sopranos'' fans know that Dominic Chianese is an accomplished singer (the 70-year-old released his first CD of standards last summer, called ''Hits''). Turns out his son, actor Dominic Chianese Jr. (Uncle Junior Junior?), is also a musician. On New Year's Eve, at New York's ever-popular Elaine's, the elder and younger Chianeses were both dancing in the New Year, and at around 2 a.m., Dominic Sr. sat in with the band, playing guitar and singing ''Guantanamera.'' Dominic Jr. joined in, backing Dad on drums for ''As Time Goes By.''

HITCHING POST TV's Judge Joe Brown made it legal with girlfriend of six years Deborah Herron, a former manager for the retail chain Express. They married on Saturday at a private seaside ceremony in Oxnard, Calif., and will honeymoon in Paris.

PASSING NOTES Eileen Heckart, who won an Oscar for her performance as the domineering mother of a blind young man in 1972's ''Butterflies Are Free,'' died at 82 on Monday at her home in Norwalk, Conn. She had been battling cancer for three years. While she worked tirelessly in films (''Somebody Up There Likes Me,'' ''Bus Stop'') and TV (she played Mary Richards' Aunt Flo on ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show''), she had an even more celebrated career on Broadway, where she created the ''Butterflies'' role and the one in ''The Bad Seed'' that she played in the 1956 film version. Other Broadway triumphs included ''Picnic'' and ''Barefoot in the Park.'' She won a special Tony for career achievement in 2000, the same year of her acclaimed final stage performance, in the starring role of a woman with Alzheimer's disease in Kenneth Lonergan's (''You Can Count on Me'') Off-Broadway play ''The Waverly Gallery.''...

Ian Hamilton, the British poet and critic whose unauthorized biography of J.D. Salinger was the source of a Supreme Court battle, died Thursday at age 61 of undisclosed causes. The reclusive ''Catcher in the Rye'' author sued to block publication of Hamilton's ''J.D. Salinger: A Writer's Life'' because it quoted from his letters without his permission. In 1987, the Supreme Court agreed with Salinger that he retained copyright of the letters' contents, and Hamilton published instead a book called ''In Search of J.D. Salinger,'' based on his frustrated attempt to publish the first biography....

Ralph Sutton, a master of the early jazz piano style called stride, died Sunday in Denver at 79 after suffering a stroke. Discovered by the trombonist Jack Teagarden, Sutton played with a variety of jazz greats, culminating with a stint in the World's Greatest Jazz Band with Bob Haggart and Yank Lawson. He was still touring as recently as October, and called himself (as he titled one of his albums) the ''Last of the Whorehouse Piano Players.''