Billy Preston

The Houston-born keyboardist whose organ runs through records by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Sly Stone, and Johnny Cash. Self-taught, Billy Preston was backing gospel singers as a child, joined Little Richard's band in 1962, and met the Beatles in Hamburg that year. Seven years later he was on the rooftop with them, and Get Back went out credited to the Beatles with Billy Preston, a co-billing the band gave no one else once it was recording under its own name. His own records for Apple and A&M, from That's the Way God Planned It through I Wrote a Simple Song, Music Is My Life, and The Kids & Me, carried church organ into funk and put the clavinet at the front of Outa-Space.

Outa-Space won him a Grammy. Will It Go Round in Circles and Nothing from Nothing both reached No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and he co-wrote You Are So Beautiful, a 1975 hit for Joe Cocker. He was the Rolling Stones' touring keyboardist from 1973 to 1977 and the first musical guest on the premiere of Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975. Addiction stalled his career in the 1980s, and a cocaine conviction sent him to prison at the end of the 1990s. He came back to play the Concert for George in 2002 and kept recording until he fell into a coma in November 2005. He died in Scottsdale, Arizona, on June 6, 2006. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 2021 with its Musical Excellence Award, and the documentary Billy Preston: That's the Way God Planned It opened in North American theaters in 2026.