And now they’re all gone. This morning came the sad news that keyboardist, multi-instrumentalist, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Garth Hudson, the last surviving original member of The Band, the musical ensemble known the world over as the soul of the Hudson Valley, had passed away at the age of 87.
Born Eric Hudson on August 2, 1937, in Windsor, Ontario, Garth’s colorful, classically rooted organ style was an indispensable element that helped greatly to define The Band’s music, which was also highlighted by his accordion and saxophone contributions. In 1961, after playing with the Melodines, the Silhouettes, and Paul London and the Capers, he joined Toronto rockabilly kings Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. A few years older than his band mates Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel, he famously convinced the group to designate him their “music teacher” and pay him slightly more than they each were being paid, to pacify his parents’ concerns about their son joining a touring rock ’n’ roll band. The Hawks left Hawkins in 1963 and played on their own before being hired in August 1965 by the newly electrified Bob Dylan as his backing unit.
In 1967, while Dylan was living in Woodstock and recovering from his July 1966 motorcycle accident, Garth and the erstwhile Hawks sequestered themselves in the West Saugerties house they dubbed Big Pink. There, they casually worked on and recorded the acoustic-dominated music that would be bootlegged and later commercially repackaged as The Basement Tapes, a set of songs that are now regarded as the seeds of the Americana genre. Renaming themselves, simply, The Band—that was what the locals called them, anyway—the Dylan-less quintet released their debut, Music from Big Pink, in 1968. The album had an immediate effect on the course of rock ’n’ roll, inspiring the likes of the Beatles, Eric Clapton, the Byrds, and others to move away from sprawling psychedelia and embrace and discover lower-key rural roots styles. The followup, 1970’s The Band, would be nearly as influential, and the original lineup of the group would make five more studio albums before permanently breaking up with the 1976 concert immortalized in the film The Last Waltz. After the 1986 death of Richard Manuel, The Band would reunite, sans Robertson, for three albums starting in 1983, until Rick Danko passed in 1999. Levon Helm left us in 2012; Robbie Robertson died in 2023.
Garth had remained in the Woodstock/Kingston area, releasing his own albums, working as an incredibly prolific session player who appears on literally dozens of albums by international-level artists, and graciously sitting in and recording with local musicians and besotted touring bands who came through. He was an amicable but notably quiet man, and our conversations during the times I encountered him were minimal. I enjoyed learning more about him while researching my 2016 book The Band FAQ. The last time I saw him play live was in 2015, when he accompanied Canadian greats the Sadies at the much-missed Club Helsinki in Hudson. That was a hell of a night for music.
But I think maybe my favorite memory of Garth isn’t one of seeing him on stage or hearing him on record. It’s of walking into Adams Fairacre Farms in Kingston several years back and noticing him lurking in the produce section. There he was, the secret sauce of the sound of The Band, hunched and hovering silently over the apples, picking up the freshly harvested specimens one by one and studying them, intensely. Looking for the sweetest notes. Somehow, I’m sure, he always found them.
This article appears in January 2025.
