American musician and songwriter Billy Preston was BOTD in 1946. Born in Houston, Texas, he moved with his mother to Los Angeles as a child. A musical prodigy, he was performing and singing with Mahalia Jackson and Nat King Cole by his early teens. In 1962, he joined Little Richard’s band, through which he met the Beatles, the start of a long collaboration. Often referred to as “the 5th Beatle”, Jackson played organ and electric piano on the Get Back and Abbey Road albums, and is the only non-Beatle to have been credited on their recordings. He also performed with the Rolling Stones throughout the 1970s, and had a successful solo career as a songwriter, including the hits Outa-Space, for which he won his first Grammy, and You Are So Beautiful, written for Joe Cocker. Moving effortlessly between R&B, soul, funk, gospel, blues and rock styles, he worked with Johnny Cash, Eric Clapton, Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross, Ray Charles, Norah Jones and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Preston struggled to reconcile his homosexuality with his Christian faith, and remained in the closet for much of his adult life. In the 1970s, he began abusing cocaine as a way of coping with his sexual conflicts. In 1991, he pled guilty to sexually assaulting a 16 year-old Mexican boy, and was sentenced to house arrest and drug rehabilitation. He was imprisoned in 1998 after setting fire to his own house as part of an insurance fraud. He died in 2006 after long term health problems caused by drug abuse. He was 59. In 2021, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.