Childhood
Kramer was born in 1958 in New York City to a single Jewish mother. His birth father was Joey Bonner, a record promoter during the 1960s and 70s who was once the tour manager for Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin and other soul/R&B artists of the era. At age 2, Kramer was adopted by Gary & Rosalyn Kramer of Long Island; Kramer did not learn of his origins until 2008.
Through his birth father, who died in 2007, Kramer has mixed African American, Polish and Native American ancestry. Kramer has an older brother by birth, from the same set of parents, who was a senior VP in charge of radio promotions at New York City's Jive Records. Kramer's great-great-great-grandfather Essex Bonner fought in an all-black battalion in the US Civil War, and his great-grandmother Pinky Gowakawa was a full-blooded Native American from a tribe based in Virginia.
Kramer's adoptive father, Gary Kramer, sold cars, while Rosalyn Kramer was a Long Island housewife who worked sometimes as a bookkeeper. Kramer graduated from Sachem High School in 1976, then moved to New York City, where he would remain a resident until 2003, living mostly in the Tribeca district.
Read more about this topic: Kramer (musician)
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“The landscape of the northern Sprawl woke confused memories of childhood for Case, dead grass tufting the cracks in a canted slab of freeway concrete. The train began to decelerate ten kilometers from the airport. Case watched the sun rise on the landscape of childhood, on broken slag and the rusting shells of refineries.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“Toddlerhood resembles adolescence because of the rapidity of physical growth and because of the impulse to break loose of parental boundaries. At both ages, the struggle for independence exists hand in hand with the often hidden wish to be contained and protected while striving to move forward in the world. How parents and toddlers negotiate their differences sets the stage for their ability to remain partners during childhood and through the rebellions of the teenage years.”
—Alicia F. Lieberman (20th century)
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)