Jean

After Ben was discharged from the service, the couple moved to California so that Jean could
pursue her singing career. She immediately began to pound the pavement looking for an agent. In
February of 1951, in a sheer twist of fate, she ended up at Buck Ram's Sunset Strip office. She had
stopped at a modeling agency in the same building where Ram worked. Since she didn't want to
model, the receptionist suggested she try the man down the hall. She wasn't sure what he did, but
she thought he had something to do with singers.
He did.
Ram was a successful songwriter with "I"ll Be Home for Christmas," "Remember When," and "At
Your Beck and Call," among his credits at the time. In 1951 he was managing several pop music
and Country & Western acts. Jean sang for him. He was impressed but thought her voice was too
classical for the type of entertainers he represented.
The didn't stop Jean. She was determined, and by the end of the interview Ram had agreed to
provide her with a vocal coach in exchange for part time secretarial work. He also agreed to
arrange a job interview for her with the Public Relations firm of Gabee, Lutz & Heller, the company
that represented Tony Martin, Liberace and Lawrence Welk among others.
When Jean left Ram's office that day, she didn't know it, but in one short year she would be on her
way to becoming one of the first and most important women executives in the music industry.
In the beginning she worked part time for Gabee, Lutz & Heller then took on the job full time. At
night she worked for Ram. In her "spare time" she studied voice, but by 1953 her singing career
was a thing of the past, and she was entrenched in the business of music. She had begun writing
the Personality Plugger, a weekly newsletter keeping booking agents, disc jockeys and the juke box
associations apprized of the activities of both Gabee, Lutz & Heller and Ram's acts. Today the
Plugger still plugs along, although not with its original regularity.
Jean and Gabee, Lutz & Heller soon parted ways in a disagreement over the time she was spending
on Ram's acts. It was a blessing in disguise because Jean Bennet was going to need all the time she
had to concentrate on a new act.
It was early in the evening in the fall of 1952 when Tony Williams came to audition for Ram.
Bennett sat silently as Williams' sang "Danny Boy" a'capella. Ram liked Williams' voice, but he was
looking for a group to sing his songs. Tony suggested he bring several of the young men with
whom he had been singing. Within weeks the four young men had signed a management contract,
and Ram and Bennett had received permission from Federal Records, where the young men had a
recording contract, to record the group. It was only a few weeks later that Jean was going thorugh
a box of Ram's old, forgtten songs and found one she thought would be a hit. It was entitled, "Only
You."
Ram wrote and arranged the music and produced the records for the group. The young men
worked hard. Jean booked and promoted them and continues to promote them today..
In 1954 Jean and Ram formed Personality Productions, and agency to book and promote the group.
Ram had the group incorporate as The Five Platters, Inc. in order to protect their interest. Jean was
corporate Vice President.
She has traveled the world with the group and had them named Goodwill Ambassadors to the World
by President Kennedy. She booked them in South Africa where they were the first black group to
play to an integrated audience. She built and protected the group's image, making sure that the good
things made the press and trying to keep out the bad. She even imitated Zola Taylor in a radio
interview when Zola missed the show due to a traffic jam.
When Tony Williams left the group for a career as a solo artist in 1960, she bought his stock in The
Five Platters. In 1966 she bought out Ram's interest in Personality Productions and moved the
offices to Las Vegas.
For 50 years she has promoted The Platters. Booking and managing have never been her favorite
part of the business and on several occasions she has turned those duties over to others. In the
early 90's she set her secretary, Mary Fanning, up in business as Square One Promotions to handle
the booking of the group, but she never sold Personaity or The Five Platters as has been stated on
one website.
Her favorite role has been that of public relations and publicity for the group. The guiding principal
of her campaign has always been to never mislead the public into believing the singers today are
originals. With each change of personnel she has made it her objective to let the public know that
the voices and the faces are different, but the music is the same - the music written or arranged by
"The Master," Buck Ram.
At 80 Jean is as active as ever. The next project on her agenda is the International DooWop
Museum and Hall of Fame in Las Vegas which will spotlight The Platters and other great groups of
the 50's. She is also working on a book about her 50 years with The Platters a.k.a. The Buck Ram
Platters

Buck Ram's Music is Here to Stay