Boots Records released 3 singles, all rare. This Eddie Daniels single from 1969 is highly prized and worth $$$$ along with its bootleg issued in 1975. The label is related to Prolific Music and Prolific Publishing which were probably owned by Walter Douglas.
Walter Douglas owned two small labels in Los Angeles, Vanessa and Douglas Records. Mickey Rat in a comment at 45Cat writes that the Douglas and Vanessa labels and Prolific Music Pub. (BMI) were located at 2511 Stanford Avenue, Los Angeles (1958-1961). Prolific was listed (1961-68) at 841 East 25th Street, Los Angeles. Besides the labels & publishing companies he owned, nothing else is known about Walter Douglas’ life.
Discogs states that Prolific Music was associated with Bobby Smith (Robert Lewis Smith) , composer of the R&B classic “Tippin In” and a onetime member of the Erskine Hawkins band. Smith was associated with the New York Apollo Records and was part owner of Buzz Records, a label so obscure that I can’t find an image of one. Buzz had one release by Fantasy, a CA band with no listings anywhere.
Azuza Records was a 1960s R&B/soul label but was not located in Azuza, CA but at 4523 South Western Avenue in Los Angeles. Discogs lists three releases on Azuza including one by Jennell Hawkins, a soul singer who appeared on several more small Los Angeles labels: Dynamic, Dynamite, Titanic and Amazon. I have no information about who owned these labels though clearly the labels of Dynamic and Dynamite Records look too close not to have the same owner. Titanic also shares a few design similarities.
Dynamic, Dynamite and Amazon were distributed by ARDCO (Allied Record Distributing Company). ARDCO was created in 1958 by Allied Record Manufacturing Company in Hollywood. Allied was a major record pressing company that started in 1933 out of an abandoned Columbia West Coast pressing plant. ARDCO distributed independent record labels that had limited means of distributing their product and in 1960 created CONART (Consolidated Artists) which enabled artists to act as their own label. It could be that labels Dynamic, Dynamite and Amazon were all under the CONART umbrella but that history is lost. Look at the four labels above and you can see that ARDCO distributed Dynamite and Dynamic while CIRCA distributed Amazon.
Discogs continues the Allied saga to explain CIRCA: In 1962 Allied and ARDCO were sold to PRI (Precision Radiation Instruments). Mike Elliot was running ARDCO at the time but left to create CIRCA (Consolidated International Record Company of America), a releasing company for independent labels that worked with various distributors around the US, similar to how CONART operated. The entire PRI story is told over at BothSidesNow and is worth a read.
Let’s circle back to Crown Records: PRI bought Tops Records and for a time was occupying the Cadet Records building at 5810 S. Normandie Avenue.
Music By The Pound 