Not for red-hot Rocker Billy Joel the dreary duty calls expected of a visiting VIP in Cuba. Between sets by a star-studded U.S. rock, pop and jazz caravan visiting Havana for the first concert of its kind in 20 years, fellow Performers Kris Kristofferson and Wife Rita Coolidge duly toured socialist showplaces, including a pioneer school. Billy, by contrast, crammed a peaked cap over his swirl of black curls, clamped a cigar in his teeth and settled down on a beach to rap with enthralled young Cubans, who, from tuning in to Miami rock stations, already knew the words to such Joel hits as Big Shot and Only the Good Die Young.

It was obviously not the bronchitis with which Billy Carter, 41, had been hospitalized that led his presidential elder brother to diagnose Billy at a recent press conference as "seriously ill." Last week the younger Carter, accompanied by Wife Sybil, checked out of an Americus, Ga., hospital and flew to California to dry out at the Alcohol Rehabilitation Service of the Long Beach I Naval Regional Medical Center. Carter, who has admitted guzzling two dozen beers a day, will undergo six weeks of group therapy and psychodrama in order to learn how to deal with his drinking problem. Betty Ford and Billy's fellow Georgian Herman Talmadge completed the same kind of treatment.

For Tennis Ace Jimmy Connors, 26, was it love and match? Mischievous Jimmy would say naught, but friends revealed that he had secretly wed Playboy's 1977 Playmate of the Year Patti McGuire, 27, his constant companion (along with his mother, of course) since the two met last year at a Los Angeles disco. Only trouble was, the friends were vague about the ceremony. They said it took place last October on a mountainside outside Tokyo while Connors was nursing an ankle injury. Whatever happened in Japan, they were definitely married in a civil ceremony in February in St. Louis, from which area the bride and groom both hail. The retired Playmate is expecting in August.

The bon mots flowed faster than the Clement Colombet Chablis at the American Film Institute dinner in Beverly Hills, Calif., honoring bulbous Meisterzinger of Murder Alfred Hitchcock at 79. "Hitch's genius," quipped Actor John Forsythe, "is that he can put such life into death." Ingrid Bergman praised the director as "a gentleman farmer who raises goose flesh." Ventured Cary Grant, who managed to emerge alive from four Hitchcock epics: "The best is yet to come, Hitch." Spattered with tributes and smothered by adoration, Hitchcock observed in his familiar bullfrog voice: "Man does not live by murder alone. He needs affection, approval, encouragement and, occasionally, a hearty meal."

Nobody complained when Opera Diva Helen Traubel sang at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. But James Brown, the king of soul, at the shrine of country music? Well, that is noncountry royalty of a different kind, on account of all the king's funky songs. Insisted Pianist Del Wood, one of a pride of Opry regulars protesting

Brown's appearance: "Country music exemplifies America's heartbeat, and I don't think its heartbeat is below the belly button." Squelching critics with an unexpected navel maneuver, Brown indicated he would forego below the belly button hits like Sex Machine in favor of Love Me Tender and Tennessee Waltz. "Anything dirty about that?" grinned he.

On the Record

Dolly Parton, country singer, on the art in her splashy new Fifth Avenue apartment: "Some of the pictures cost a lot of money, and I can't help thinkin', 'Good Lord, I coulda done that in first grade.'"

Gerald Ford, former President: "I certainly am not a candidate. But I learned a long time ago never to say never."

Claudette Colbert, 73, actress, looking back over her threescore movies: "I would love to have played bitches, but I only played one really, in The Sign of the Cross. I loved every minute of it."

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