Jan Preston is well loved across Australia and in Europe for her original songs of bright eyed humour and pathos and her unique rhythm and blues piano performances. She has come a long way from the shy classical pianist, who after 17-years of technical training joined the organised chaos that was the legendary Red Mole Cabaret in the mid-1970s.
Jan Preston
Preston grew up in Greymouth in a working class family who loved to perform and sing around the piano. While she continued to be inspired by the honky tonk piano tunes of yesteryear, it was to be decades before she found her niche as Australia's 'Queen of the Boogie Woogie'.
It was classical music that first drew her into a musical career, and while after 17-years of rigorous training the vision of being a concert pianist was fading, her passion for performing and writing had not.
In the mid-1970s she found herself playing piano and composing music for the radical Red Mole Cabaret, who took over Carmen's Cabaret in Wellington on Sunday evenings with their anarchic shows that included satirical theatrics, fire-eating and topless dancers.
However it was performing after the shows with house band Midge Marsden and the Country Flyers and their blues influenced sounds that drew her out as a performer.
She was commissioned to write her first soundtrack for a documentary by actor Sam Neil before joining the Red Mole troupe on a US tour where she was inspired by encounters with legendary piano players including Dr Longhair. In the USA Preston and the other Red Mole musicians formed their own unit called Red Alert.
On her return to New Zealand Preston, Hello Sailor guitarist Harry Lyon and former Country Flyers and Red Alert bassist Neil Hannan formed the reggae tinged pop group Coup D'Etat, releasing an album that included the top 10 hit, Doctor I Like Your Medicine.
Rock stardom wasn't for her so she escaped to Australia to write and compose but was soon back in the limelight when she and drummer Mina Motu formed The Tribe which recorded two EPs, and achieved minor chart success.
Jan Preston has lived in Sydney since 1980 and has recorded and toured extensively, won jazz and blues awards, and scored the music for dozens of film and documentary soundtracks.
Producer Keith Newman talks to Jan Preston about her colourful career.
The Red Mole Troup Oct 1979. Coney Island. New York.
L to R: Alan Brunton, Neil Hannan, Deborah Hunt, John Davies, Jan Preston, Martin Edmond, Sally Rodwell. Photo: Joe Bleakley.
