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 , and on his return to the UK, supervised the country's first calypso session on January 30, 1950 led by at , other record dates with and persuaded to record . He began to record Caribbean musicians for in June while continuing his association with Parlophone. In 1952, via the , Preston merged the New Orleans inspired jazz of with a rhythm section led by and other musicians from the West Indies. He advanced the career of and (leading to the emergence of skiffle), produced Lyttelton's "Bad Penny Blues" (engineered by ) in 1956 and '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 /) and established in West London in 1956. Following a brief association with , Preston licensed recordings to (the , 1955-59), later releases were via EMI's Columbia label (whose parent company was , from 1965 the label was part of ). Usually the discs have a "Record Supervision" credit. He was the cousin of the historian and occasional jazz critic Eric Hobsbawm.