Remembering the highlights of Preston's career

The musician worked with some of the biggest names in the business.
By RICHARD HARRINGTON
WASHINGTON POST
Billy Preston was one of the music business's true MVPs, someone who had his own substantial hits but whose real gift was making other stars sound better. After all, there's no musician who can claim to have been coveted by both The Beatles and the Rolling Stones in their prime, or to have been touted as Ray Charles' successor by Charles himself.
Go to Preston's entry in All Music Guide, click on "credits" and prepare to be amazed. He was Everysideman, part Zelig, part Forrest Gump, but never anywhere accidentally or incidentally. Preston was always invited to be in the right place at the right time.
Preston, who died Tuesday at 59 in Los Angeles after a long, kidney-related illness that had left him in a coma since November, was a virtuoso on the Hammond B-3 organ. Two albums recorded before he was 20 were aptly titled "The Wildest Organ in Town" and "Most Exciting Organ Ever." His ecstatic, loose-limbed jubilation was acquired at Los Angeles' Victory Baptist Church, where his mother was the organist. The precocious Preston often backed visiting gospel royalty; Mahalia Jackson was so impressed she drafted him at age 10. Church never left Preston -- he called his '70s band the God Squad -- and an exuberant gospel underpinning remained constant in his music.
Having him around
In the '60s and '70s in particular, Preston had a memorable look: mushroom-cloud-size Afro, ingratiating gap-toothed smile, funky fashions that seemed more dreamed-up than designed. And he had a matching personality that invited you in. The countless artists who sought him out probably did so as much for his engaging character as his dazzling virtuosity on organ and piano.
Take The Beatles, for instance. That relationship went back to 1962, when a 15-year-old Preston was hired for Little Richard's backing band on a European tour that was supposed to be about gospel but that Little Richard decided to make about rock 'n' roll. Preston first met The Beatles during their fabled residency at the Star Club in Hamburg; a year later, they'd both made their album debuts with "Sixteen Year Old Soul" and "Please Please Me," respectively.
They'd hook up again in 1969, as the Beatles were about to break up while recording their final album, "Let It Be." George Harrison, always Preston's best Beatles buddy, had quit and walked out of the studio and gone to a Ray Charles concert in London, where Preston was playing organ. Harrison brought Preston back to the studio, where his keen musicianship and gregarious personality temporarily calmed the tension.
'Fifth Beatle' argument
In bootlegged "Let It Be" session tapes, one can hear several heated arguments between John Lennon and Paul McCartney about making Preston a group member (Lennon was all for it). That would have made Preston officially "the fifth Beatle," a title he was not loath to exploit over the next three decades. Perhaps as consolation, "Get Back," the only Beatles single to enter the British charts at No. 1, was credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston" -- the first and only time the band shared the spotlight with a sideman. Preston also accompanied The Beatles during their famous rooftop gig in London, the band's last public performance.