“To Whom it May Concern: Hire Kramer.”
That was the entire contents of a letter of recommendation long-time Richmond resident Marty Kramer received from a former boss when he was out looking for work.
From driving the stars to making sure the right guitar was on stage, Kramer spent decades as a tour manager, road manager, a personal manager and a concert production manager for the likes of Randy Bachmann to Peggy Lee.
And this earned him a reputation as the guy who gets things done quietly in the background so the stars can get on stage and shine.
A series of conversations between two long-time friends in the entertainment business, Kramer and entertainment lawyer David Wolinsky, has resulted in a recently published book Road Boss: Untold Stories from Entertainment’s Ultimate Tour Manager.
Kramer explains in the book that he was often what’s known as a “body man,” someone who is “on hand to offer any necessary assistance, including arranging lodgings, managing interactions with the media, the public, and family, coordinating meals, and conducting personal briefings.”
He goes on to say his motto in life was “No excuses. Get the job done and keep a record.”
Kramer has lived in Richmond since the 1990s.
He would meet up with Wolinsky from time to time and talk about his years on the road with musicians and other celebrities, including a “dinner” with one American president.
“These are great stories – I don’t want them lost to posterity,” Wolinsky told the Richmond News.
“Most of us, if we got a backstage pass, it’s a story we’d tell for the rest of our lives.”
But Kramer got backstage passes to the biggest names in show business over his decades-long career, and that’s the subject of Wolinsky’s latest book.
The stories are personal and human, giving insight into the backroom workings of putting on music concerts, driving celebrities and sometimes just making sure they got a good night’s sleep.
The entertainment business is full of off-colour stories, but Kramer was careful to treat his subjects with respect, as he did when he was working for the stars.
“In the book, there are no salacious stories because Marty wouldn’t do that,” Wolinsky said.
From a young age, Kramer brushed up against celebrity, either established or up-and-coming.
He even met a young Robert Zimmerman at a friend’s house, who described him as “some kind of folk singer.”
Years later, Kramer bumped into Zimmerman, then known as Bob Dylan, at the Minneapolis airport and flew with him to L.A., sharing a limo home.
Other memories recounted in the book include eating sardine sandwiches with Rodney Dangerfield, making sure a local deli treated Jackie Mason well, driving Mr. T while he meditated and looking after Yul Brynner’s Shar-Pei.
Wolinsky, an entertainment lawyer based in Vancouver, convinced Kramer to tell his stories over coffee, with Wolinsky recording and later writing down his stories.
Kramer would then read and proofread them, which eventually culminated in Road Boss, available for purchase at Amazon.
250,000-item collection
But this isn’t his only legacy that Wolinsky ensured for Kramer.
Over the years, Kramer has collected memorabilia estimated to be worth millions.
Growing up poor, Kramer said he couldn’t collect things such as baseball cards as his friends did. When he started working, he decided to commit 25 per cent of his earnings to buying things that could one day become collectibles.
There are about 250,000 items in the collection, including about 30,000 rare and collectible LPs.
He has promo copies with the A side in mono and the B side in stereo.
On top of that, he has a collection of reel-to-reels, cassettes, 8-tracks, CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays.
His collection goes beyond music memorabilia and includes toys, comics and pinball machines.
Thinking about his vast collection of memorabilia, Wolinsky asked Kramer one day if he had a will.
This got Kramer thinking about where his stuff would go after he passed away, and he concluded it should benefit children through a foundation.
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