Garth Hudson, The Band Keyboardist Dies at 87

Garth Hudson, the inventive keyboard player whose soulful playing was a key part of 1960s/70s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group The Band‘s country-tinged Americana anthems has died at 87. The last surviving member of the group, Hudson died peacefully in his sleep on Tuesday morning (Jan. 21) at a nursing home in Woodstock, N.Y., according to the Toronto Star.

Along with fellow Canadians Robbie Robertson (guitar/vocals), Rick Danko (bass/vocals) and Richard Manuel (piano/vocals) and lone American member, drummer/singer Levon Helm, Hudson was a key component of the unique sound the band explored during its initial 20-year run.

He officially began playing with The Band in 1965, after they had served a two-year apprenticeship as the back-up group for rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins. The Hawks — as they were known — left Hawkins’ employ in 1963 after years on the road honing their sound. After meeting Bob Dylan in 1965, the group recorded the song “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window” the next year for what would become Dylan’s beloved 1966 double album, Blonde on Blonde, which featured such classics as “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” “Visions of Johanna,” “I Want You” and “Just Like a Woman.”

Dylan toured with The Band as his backing group in 1966 and then joined him in the studio for a series of 1967 sessions that became The Basement Tapes. The fruit of those sessions recorded at the group’s legendary Saugerties, N.Y. home known as Big Pink, were not officially released until 1975. That home was the inspiration for the title of the Band’s 1968 debut album, Music From Big Pink, which spotlighted Hudson’s churchy organ playing on such earthy anthems as “Tears of Rage” and what is perhaps the group’s most well-known song, “The Weight.”

For those who saw the Timothée Chalamet Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown — which (spoiler alert) ends after the folk icon burns his bridges by going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival — it’s instructive to note that The Band served as Dylan’s backup group on his first official electric tour later that year.

Though they performed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 — which took place about 90 minutes from Big Pink — they were not included in the final film due to legal issues. The rustic, black and white cover of their eponymous next album from 1969 was a visual metaphor for their rich, throwback sound, which incorporated dusty barroom laments, aching rock odes and urgent country balladry for a mash-up roping in rock, country and classic R&B. It was all anchored by a gritty, hand-made, sepia-toned quality that served as an antidote to the more expansive, paisley-colored psychedelic experimentation and bombast of the era.

Classically trained pianist Eric Garth Hudson was born in Windsor, Ontario on August 2, 1937 and played organ in his church (and at his uncle’s funeral home) as a young man as well as studying music at the University of Western Ontario in the early 1950s before dropping out to join the rock group the Silhouettes.

Equally adept at saxophone, trumpet, violin and accordion, among other instruments, Hudson was best known for playing the two-tiered Lowery electric organ, whose distinctive, church-like sound can most famously be heard on the Bach-esque intro to the Band’s 1968 classic “Chest Fever.” That song became a highlight of the group’s shows, during which Hudson reliable performed an extended, improvised solo that roped in bits of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor on its way to stops at classical, jazz and soul.

Hudson’s oscillating, bouncing sound can also famously be heard on another of the band’s most well-known tunes, “Up on Cripple Creek,” from the 1969 eponymous album. On that song he played a clavinet through a wah-wah pedal, giving it a distinctive, Jews-harp-like twang; that song reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The group would release a handful of albums through the mid-1970s, including 1970s Stage Fright (“The Shape I’m In”) 1971’s Cahoots (”Life Is a Carnival,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece”), 1973’s cover album Moondog Matinee, as well as 1975’s Northern Lights – Southern Cross (“Ophelia,” “It Makes No Difference”) and the final LP by the original lineup, 1977’s Islands, before substance abuse and intra-band quarreling led to their split.

As a final, grand gesture, though, they set their disputes aside for one final, blow-out show dubbed The Last Waltz. The all-star show featuring guests Dylan, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and many others, was documented by director Martin Scorsese for the live movie/album of the same name. The group would get back together in the 1980s — without key member Robertson — and released a trio of albums that did not reach the creative or critical heights of their early trio of classics.

In addition to his work on albums by Hawkins and John Hammond in his pre-Band days, Hudson could be heard on Dylan’s 1966 Blonde on Blonde album, as well as the soundtracks to Last Summer, Kent State, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy and Best Revenge. Throughout his career he was an in-demand session ace as well, recording tracks for albums by artists including: Bobby Charles, Eric Von Schmidt, Ringo Starr, Maria Muldaur, Paul Butterfield, Neko Case, the Secret Machines, Eric Clapton, Band-mates Danko and Helm, as well as Emmylou Harris, the Lemonheads, Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, The Call, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Marianne Faithfull, Camper Van Beethoven and many more.

He released his first solo album, The Sea to the North, in 2001, and followed up with 2010’s Garth Hudson Presents a Canadian Celebration of The Band. Hudson was inducted into the Canadian Juno Hall of Fame in 1989 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 and received a lifetime achievement awards from the Grammys in 2008.

Check out some of Hudson’s playing below.