Denis Preston

British jazz critic, broadcaster and record producer.

Born November 16, 1916 in Stoke Newington, London.

Died October 21, 1979.

A former violinist, he was a broadcaster on music for the BBC from 1940. In New York in 1948, he assisted English Decca in establishing [l1060], and on his return to the UK, supervised the country's first calypso session on January 30, 1950 led by [a2046390] at [l217694], other record dates with [a478646] and persuaded [l2294] to record [a53143]. He began to record Caribbean musicians for [l114511] in June while continuing his association with Parlophone. In 1952, via the [a6048946], Preston merged the New Orleans inspired jazz of [a148132] with a rhythm section led by [a2046391] and other musicians from the West Indies. He advanced the career of [a270085] and [a270088] (leading to the emergence of skiffle), produced Lyttelton's "Bad Penny Blues" (engineered by [a226551]) in 1956 and [a271488]'s "Stranger of the Shore" in 1961, both recordings reached the pop chars, the latter was the first British single to reach No. 1 in the US.

Often described as "Europe's first independent record producer", in 1953 he founded Lansdowne Productions (later [l1093456]/[l432403]/[l301973]) and established [l267342] in West London in 1956. Following a brief association with [l431617], Preston licensed recordings to [l11716] (the [l290164], 1955-59), later releases were via EMI's Columbia label (whose parent company was [l97841], from 1965 the label was part of [l253617]). Usually the discs have a "Record Supervision" credit. He was the cousin of the historian and occasional jazz critic Eric Hobsbawm.