It was a non-descript home off Los Coyotes Diagonal directly across the street from the East District Long Beach Police station. Only the well-used white Dodge van parked on the lawn made the house stand out from the others. But inside, wow…a demented record collector’s dream.
This was how my memory works ten years or so after meeting one-time Germs drummer Don Bolles, who at that time was living with a girlfriend, whom I never did meet, in Long Beach. Upon entering the house, to the left were oversized tires for Bolles’ van – never could figure why his girlfriend kicked him out – to the right was Bolles’ sunken record room – about the dimensions of an oversized closet – with Bolles seated amidst stacks of 45s and LP covers of the most bizarre stripe. Before entering the record room, on some shelves were the overflow 45s, pretty much all song poem 45 rpm vinyl.
Collecting song poem 45s doesn’t come easy. Song poems are the detritus to the recording industry. If you’re old enough to remember Hit Parade or Song Hits magazines, then you might remember the ads to “record your own songs” with a post office box where a fee was accepted.
These recordings on labels like Fable, Film City, Air and dozens other imprints are the product of generally songwriters and singers of limited talent willing to spend cash money to get their creations on vinyl. PBS once ran a great documentary on this song poem universe.
Bolles had come across a cache of song poem demos that included the work of Jimmy Drake, aka Nervous Nervous, whose blood curdling hit “Transfusion” shocked teens and their parents and was so macabre it got banned on radio across the world and became a Dr. Demento classic.
With credentials like these, hanging out with Bolles and listening to his albums, looking at the covers and hearing stories about where he got these records was…shall I say…a unique experience. I visited him only twice, once with my friend Don Haley from Placerville, but we still talk about it to this day…Christian clown album covers were a specialty, along with an excruciatingly rare LP with Herb Jeffries singing the songs of Eden Ahbez, who wrote “Nature Boy” for Nat “King” Cole.
Then Bolles moved on. Reports had him in Orange County, now Huntington Park. I once saw him at the Orange County Record Show wearing a feather boa. He’s different and now – according to this L.A. Times story – has brought his act to a museum, which is how I thought of his sunken record room back in the day.
An example of Bolles’ collection of albums