1. Donald Ward Preston was born on September 21,1932 and is an American jazz and rock keyboardist.
18 Facts About Don Preston
1. 2.
Don Preston is best known for being a member of the original version of Frank Zappa's band The Mothers of Invention during the late 1960s.
3.
Don Preston continued to work with Zappa during the early 1970s following the band's split.
4.
Don Preston's father played saxophone and trumpet, and had been offered the lead trumpet chair in the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.
5.
Don Preston took sporadic lessons on the piano from the age of about five.
6.
Don Preston served in Trieste, Italy and playing in the Army band alongside Herbie Mann.
7.
Don Preston took up the bass while in the 98th Army band.
8.
Don Preston sat in with Elvin Jones and others at the city's West End Cafe where Yusef Lateef conducted twice-a-week jam sessions with Milt Jackson's brother, bassist Alvin Jackson.
9.
Between 1958 and 1965, Don Preston played with a number of jazz artists, including Shorty Rogers, Charlie Haden, Paul Bley, Emil Richards and Paul Beaver.
10.
In 1966, Don Preston began a long collaboration with Frank Zappa as the keyboardist of the original Mothers of Invention.
11.
Don Preston is a co-founder of the Grandmothers and toured with them from 2000 through 2016.
12.
Don Preston's playing, like his compositions, ranges across panoramas of mood and emotion, all colored with the freedom that comes from possessing remarkable facility.
13.
Don Preston has played and recorded with the likes of John Lennon, Peter Erskine and Robby Krieger of The Doors.
14.
Don Preston has scored more than 20 feature films and 14 plays.
15.
Don Preston is no relation to the Don Preston who played lead guitar for Joe Cocker and Leon Russell in the 1970s.
16.
Don Preston has lectured at Cornell, Harvard and Yale Universities, Sarah Lawrence College, U of A and Queen's University Belfast.
17.
The first recordings were an audio-autobiographical production, The Don Preston Story, followed by the electronic music, contemporary space drama Colliding Galaxies.
18.
Don Preston wrote the music for the film Dancing With Were-wolves, which was released in July 2016.