Garth Hudson, who played the Lowrey organ, synthesizers, accordion, and woodwind with the Band, died in his sleep this morning (January 21), the Toronto Star reports. Hudson’s estate executor confirmed the news to The Star. Hudson was 87 years old.
Eric “Garth” Hudson was born to musician parents in Windsor, Ontario, before the family moved to London, Ontario, and enrolled him in formal piano and theory training from a young age. In his early twenties, to his parents’ alarm, he joined Ronnie Hawkins and Levon Helm in a rock band called the Hawks, assuaging his parents by stipulating that the group pay him an extra $10 a week for music lessons. He was the lineup’s final addition, joining fellow Canadians Robbie Robertson, Rich Manuel, and Rick Danko, as well as Helm and the soon-to-depart Hawkins; Hudson would go on to be the last surviving member of the Band.
Impressed with their live energy, Bob Dylan hired the Hawks in 1965 to be his backing band. They played on his electric tour in 1966, developing material for Blonde on Blonde and the sprawling Basement Tapes. Minus Dylan, the group released its first album as the Band in 1968, Music From Big Pink. The record included “The Weight,” now a classic, as well as the Band’s versions of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” and the murder ballad “Long Black Veil.”
The Band released their celebrated self-titled album in 1969, soon followed by 1970’s Stage Fright, 1971’s Cahoots, the 1973 covers album Moondog Matinee, and 1975’s Northern Lights-Southern Cross. Hudson helped smudged their roots-rock edges, adding horns to Northern Lights’ “Ophelia,” and applying then-unorthodox techniques such as using a wah pedal on their self-titled album’s “Up on Cripple Creek.” In concert, his calling card was an improvisation called “The Genetic Method,” which preceded the Lowrey organ–led classic “Chest Fever.”
The Band’s farewell show, in San Francisco, in 1976, was the basis for Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, considered one of the greatest concert films ever made. Islands, the classic lineup’s final album, followed in 1977. Hudson continued to participate in various iterations and partial reunions, performing on all three of the later Band’s albums and collaborating with Helm, Robertson, and Danko outside the group.
A series of financial hardships led him to declare bankruptcy on three occasions, for which he lay some of the blame with Robertson. According to Helm and Danko, Robertson often gave himself sole credit for their collaborative songwriting and claimed the full publishing royalties. Helm maintained—until his own death, from throat cancer, in 2012—that Robertson’s financial manipulation contributed to Manuel’s death by suicide in 1986 and the health problems that led to Danko’s death in 1999.
