Billy J.Kramer WITHOUT The Dakotas
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
To die-hard buffs, Billy J. Kramer’s name will be inextricably linked to the Beatles forever. For starters, both the Beatles and Kramer were managed by Brian Epstein. The ‘J” in Kramer’s name was suggested by John Lennon to give him an ‘edgier’ sound. Then when they were assigned to Parlophone Records, they begun working for producer George Martin, who produced nearly the entire Beatles catalog. Then the Beatles gave Kramer a barrage of Lennon/McCartney compositions to launch his career. These include: Do You Want To Know a Secret?, I’ll Be On My Way, I Call Your Name, Bad To Me, I’ll Keep You Satisfied, and From a Window. The latter three of these were among a very small group of Lennon/McCartney songs that the Beatles themselves never released. Read the rest of this entry »
The good news was that I had managed to time my cruise just right that I could head out to Los Angeles immediately after it ended and attend the winter Hollywood Show on Saturday, February 12, 2011. The bad news was that unlike most shows that I’ve attended over the last few years that had over 100 celebrities, this show had less than 70 scheduled. The good news is that even with only 70, there were roughly 30 celebs that I was interested in meeting and getting autographs from – including some real draws like Otis Day, Tracy Nelson, and Rich Little. 
Had Lesley Ann Warren been given either of two major roles that she tried out for – as Liesl in The Sound of Music or as Lois Lane in the 1978 version of Superman – I would have been all over getting her autograph in the past. As it was, I had bypassed having Bob get any signatures from her when she appeared at the Hollywood Show in February 2010. But when she made an appearance at the Chiller Theatre Show in Parsippany, New Jersey on Saturday, October 30, 2010, I did a little more research on her and found that she had been in something that interested me. 
We were in Miami and I had an agenda. That much you can count on for sure. I had suggested to Mom that staying in Miami for a day before we embarked on our four-day cruise was imperative. After all, I had no idea when I might get back to see the Hard Rock Cafe and other things. The Hard Rock in Miami we had picked up the night before, but we still had a full day’s adventure ahead of us on Sunday, February 6, 2011 – otherwise known as Super Bowl Sunday. 
As someone who has a younger, wise-cracking sister, I was certainly one to appreciate the character of Dee Thomas in the sitcom that ran for three seasons from 1976-79 called What’s Happening!! It was sort of a poor man’s version of Good Times and I can only recall it being in syndication in the 1980’s. I tuned in at times and other times I flipped it off. But in re-watching the entire run of the series (along with the first season of it’s follow-up series What’s Happening Now!!), I can tell you one thing: Danielle Spencer who played Dee basically stole every scene that she was in.