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 Cyril Blake at [l217694], other record dates with Lord Beginner and persuaded [l2294] to record Lord Kitchener. He began to record Caribbean musicians for [l114511] in June while continuing his association with Parlophone. In 1952, via the Grant-Lyttelton Paseo Jazz Band, Preston merged the New Orleans inspired jazz of Humphrey Lyttelton with a rhythm section led by Freddy Grant and other musicians from the West Indies. He advanced the career of Chris Barber and Lonnie Donegan (leading to the emergence of skiffle), produced Lyttelton's Bad Penny Blues (engineered by Joe Meek) in 1956 and Acker Bilk'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.