In 1974, Billy Preston was putting together material for his next album.”The Kids & Me.” One Night, during a nightclub gig in Atlanta, inspiration struck…and he wrote the song while sitting in his dressing room between sets.

He intended it to be a variation on a line from Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone:” “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose”—but it turned out a little more upbeat after Billy gave it to his go-to collaborator Bruce Fisher to touch things up.

Bill added a second verse, and at that point, Billy knew he had something special on his hands. In his words, ” I had a feeling it would be a hit because it was a singalong kind of thing.”

When the single hit the airwaves, it didn’t take long before his prediction was proven accurate; The song went to #1 at    all three of the music industry magazines of the day: Billboard, Cashbox, and Record World–something that rarely happened.

I guess you could say that “Nothing from Nothing” by Billy Preston was definitely Something: a Great Song of 1974!