Song of the Day 5/16: Billy Preston, “Nothing From Nothing”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is deeply flawed, but it does serve to shine an annual spotlight on some musicians who have faded into obscurity.

Billy Preston will be honored this year, 15 years after his death, with the Hall’s Musical Excellence Award, which it gives to sidemen, producers and the like. Sure, Preston was practically the Fifth Beatle (and the only one so designated who actually played in the band) and toured throughout the ’70s with the Rolling Stones, and they merely top a long list of side gigs. But that shortchanges Preston’s solo career, which began before the British Invasion and included two No. 1 singles, including this one from 1974.

Preston first met the Beatles in 1962, when he was touring with Little Richard and they opened for him at a Liverpool concert. He was brought into the band in 1969, when George Harrison walked out of the Get Back sessions and went to a Ray Charles concert in London. Preston was playing organ, and Harrison brought him back to the studio, where Preston’s upbeat, positive personality helped calm the squabbling foursome. He wound up playing their famous rooftop concert, and the song “Get Back” was credited to the Beatles with Billy Preston. This clip is from the unreleased footage that Peter Jackson has assembled into a new documentary that will be released in August.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBgtzwE-FTA

Preston was a child prodigy — I posted a clip a couple of years ago of him as a 12-year-old appearing on Nat King Cole’s TV show — and recorded his first LP in 1963, at age 16. This was the title tune when it was re-released in Britain in 1969, after Preston gained widespread fame there through the Beatles.