The last surviving member of legendary rock group The Band has died. Garth Hudson, the Canadian-American multi-instrumentalist who moved effortlessly between rock, country, and jazz genres, died on Tuesday in New York. He was 87.
Hudson “passed away peacefully in his sleep” at a nursing home in Woodstock, NY, his friend Jan Haust confirmed to The New York Times. Though the musician is best-remembered for playing the organ, he was equally adept at the accordion, French horn, saxophone, accordion, trumpet, and violin in addition to synthesizers. It was Hudson who erected the studio in which The Band recorded with Bob Dylan more than 100 songs dubbed The Basement Tapes.
The Band then set out on their own and released their hit album Music From Big Pink, which solidified their status as one of the greatest rock groups of the time. Though The Band was seen largely as a collaborative ensemble effort, most notably with Robbie Robertson, many credited Hudson with being the group’s driving force. He arranged all of the music on The Band’s albums and spent countless hours perfecting the sound of a given song.
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“He could just as easily have played with John Coltrane or the New York Symphony Orchestra as with us,” Robertson is quoted in the 1993 book The Band: Across the Great Divide, calling Hudson “far and away the most advanced musician in rock ’n’ roll.”
“He played brilliantly, in a more complex way than anybody we had ever jammed with,” Robertson wrote in his 2016 memoir Testimony. “Most of us had just picked up our instruments as kids and plowed ahead, but Garth was classically trained and could find musical avenues on the keyboard we didn’t know existed. It impressed us deeply.”
Hudson was humble about his work and didn’t often give interviews, but in a 2003 discussion with Maclean’s (via Variety) he downplayed his significant contribution to rock music. “It was a job. Play a stadium, play a theater. My job was to provide arrangements with pads underneath, pads and fills behind good poets. Same poems every night,” he said.
2025-01-21T20:07:15Z