Born in Oakland, CA, in 1931, Preston Epps learned to play various percussion instruments, including the bongos, while he was in the US military during the Korean War, where he was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. After his hitch was over he moved to Southern California and began to make some money playing bongos in coffee houses around the area. He came to the attention of Los Angeles disc jockey Art Laboe, who owned Original Sound Records and signed Epps to that label. In 1959 it released his single "Bongo Rock", which shot to #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. His follow-up record, "Bongo Bongo Bongo", sold respectably but didn't reach the heights that "Bongo Rock" did. In 1960 he released an album, but the public's taste for bongo music had begun to ebb. He released a string of bongo music over the next few years, but they didn't go anywhere In 1957 he appeared (uncredited) as a bongo player in Calypso Heat Wave (1957) and in 1968 he had a small part in Girl in Gold Boots (1968), also as a bongo player. He continued to work as a session musician in the L.A. recording scene in the 1960s and 1970s. He also kept busy playing in various clubs and nightspots into the 1990s. - IMDb Mini Biography By: [email protected]
