Billy J. Kramer

Billy J. Kramer, born Billy Ashton, ranked among the leading Merseybeat vocalists and gained entry to Beatles manager Brian Epstein’s roster. In 1963 and 1964 Epstein supplied him with several Lennon-McCartney compositions, a number of which the Beatles themselves never taped. Setting aside the worth of those otherwise unavailable tracks, Kramer’s strongest releases stood out as tuneful pop/rock. His version of “Do You Want to Know a Secret,” issued in mid-1963, climbed to number two on the British chart; George Martin’s production masked weaknesses in the singer’s upper range by accenting loud piano notes. “Bad to Me,” another Lennon-McCartney gift, followed it onto the hit parade, and further offerings from the same source—“I’ll Keep You Satisfied” and “From a Window”—also scored solidly. One Beatles castoff, “I’ll Be on My Way,” appeared only as a B-side, although the group’s own BBC recording surfaced in 1994. Kramer achieved his greatest success without Epstein’s intervention when the pop ballad “Little Children” topped the U.K. listings and briefly established him in America, where both that single and its flip, “Bad to Me,” reached the Top Ten. He performed in the 1964 concert film The T.A.M.I. Show, while his backing band the Dakotas cut their own Ventures-styled instrumental “The Cruel Sea,” a Top 20 British hit. Former Johnny Kidd & the Pirates guitarist Mick Green spent a short spell as a Dakota. After Kramer’s 1965 reading of the Bacharach-David song “Trains and Boats and Planes,” however, the hits ended once the Beatles and Epstein turned their focus elsewhere. He kept recording through the remainder of the decade, experimenting briefly with hard-edged psychedelic rock, and later maintained a steady presence on the oldies circuit.