NEW YORK - Billy Preston, the gifted and versatile keyboardist who played with everyone from Mahalia Jackson to the Beatles before scoring big hits on his own, died yesterday in Arizona after a long illness. He was 59.

Preston had been in a coma since November, suffering from kidney failure and other complications of his long battle with drugs.

He was already a session legend when he reached pop prominence in the 1960s by playing on the Beatles’ "Get Back."