Musician Garth Hudson, seen here in Toronto on Nov. 2, 2010, has died at the age of 87.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Garth Hudson, the brainy, bush-bearded organist and saxophonist whose inimitable skills and endearing eccentricities displayed as a member of the pioneering Canadian-American roots-rock icons the Band made him an almost mythical figure since the late 1960s, died Tuesday morning. He was 87.
Toronto music producer Jan Haust, a long-time friend and colleague of Mr. Hudson, confirmed that the unassuming musician and one of rock music’s great organists died “peacefully” at the Ten Broeck Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Lake Katrine, in upstate New York. No cause of death was revealed.
The native Ontarian was the oldest member and the last surviving original player in the quintet that also included Canadians Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and guitarist Robbie Robertson, and American drummer Levon Helm.
Mr. Hudson’s uncommon talent announced itself in 1968 on the group’s Music from Big Pink, a debut album that was cutting edge and old fashioned simultaneously. Playing a souped-up Lowrey organ he had hot-rodded personally, Mr. Hudson attracted notice with his churchy, majestic introduction to the album’s Chest Fever. Pete Townshend first heard it on a powerful sound system in the house owned by Peter Tork of the Monkees in Los Angeles.
“I realized I was listening to something ground-breaking,” the Who guitarist told Clash magazine in 2019.
Mr. Townshend was far from the only British rock star of the era astonished by the Band in general and Mr. Hudson in particular. Elton John recently said Music from Big Pink changed his life and that he especially appreciated Chest Fever because of Mr. Hudson’s “incredible intro work on the organ.”
The Chest Fever introduction, which eventually became its own extended on-stage showpiece for Mr. Hudson, was partly adapted from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. (Singer Maria Muldaur said that one of the delights of living in Woodstock, N.Y., was opening her windows on a sunny morning and hearing Mr. Hudson play Bach on the organ.)
According to Mr. Hudson, the non-Bach portion of the Chest Fever intro was “unqualifiable.” That adjective could well be applied to the classically trained musician who bandmate Mr. Helm once called “the soul and presiding genius of our band,” and who music critic Ralph Gleason said was the “first organ player since Fats Waller with a sense of humour.”
In the early 1960s, he was a member of the Hawks, Ronnie Hawkins’s backing group and precursor to the Band. Though a native of Arkansas, the rockabilly-singing Mr. Hawkins was a seminal figure in the development of the Toronto rock scene.
They split from Mr. Hawkins in 1963, but kept the name the Hawks. After superstar folkie Bob Dylan “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, the Hawks supplied the juice as the backing band on his controversial 1966 world tour. As the organist, Mr. Hudson had an unobstructed view of history in the making: He was at Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England, where a heckling folknik in the crowd famously branded Mr. Dylan a “Judas” for the superstar’s perceived betrayal to acoustic music.
From left: Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson of the Band pose for a group portrait in London in 1971. Mr. Hudson’s uncommon talent announced itself in 1968 on the group’s Music From Big Pink, a debut album that embraced the new and the old.Gijsbert Hanekroot/Getty Images
His impressionistic fills on Mr. Dylan’s Ballad of a Thin Man on that tour added an extra dimension to a well-known song. In his book The Old Weird America, Greil Marcus wrote that Mr. Hudson had found an organ mode “so mocking it was sadistic, a whirlpool opening and then laughing at your fear as it closes.”
The next year, in West Saugerties, N.Y. (not far from Woodstock), Mr. Hudson set up a top-notch home recording rig for Mr. Dylan in the basement of the pink house occupied by himself, Mr. Danko and Mr. Manuel. He sourced microphones from the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary and a tape recorder and two stereo mixers from music manager Albert Grossman. The resulting album, The Basement Tapes (which was not released until 1975), featured Mr. Dylan and the Hawks minus Mr. Helm.
Though the relationship between the members of the Band has often been described as a brotherhood, Mr. Hudson was more avuncular than a sibling. He talked slowly, suffered from narcolepsy and was a devoted toolshed tinkerer. Mr. Robertson, who was not alone in seeing Mr. Hudson as an enigma, wrote fondly about his bandmate in his memoir Testimony:
“He claimed he didn’t sweat, no matter how hot it got. He would buy orange juice but wait for two days to drink it until all the pulp had sunk to the bottom. He would eat around the seeds of a tomato.”
About the multi-instrumentalist’s musical ability, Mr. Robertson was unequivocal. “He could have been playing with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra or with Miles Davis, but he was with us, and we were lucky to have him.”
The Band recorded 10 studio albums. Among Mr. Hudson’s highlight moments were his soprano saxophone solo on It Makes No Difference, his accordion turn on When I Paint My Masterpiece, his organ work on Stage Fright and a funky clavinet riff on Up On Cripple Creek.
The Band halted touring after a farewell concert on Thanksgiving Day at the Winterland Ballroom in 1976, later memorialized by Martin Scorsese in the film The Last Waltz. The 1977 album Islands was the last to feature the original five members. They resumed touring in 1983 without Mr. Robertson, and would release three studio albums in the 1990s without Mr. Manuel, who committed suicide in 1986.
“Garth Hudson was the warm and open heart of the Band,” Mr. Marcus told The Globe and Mail. “He seemed to float above the jealousies and betrayals that broke a brotherhood that so many inside and outside the group believed would last.”
His post-Band career was marked by sporadic albums made with his wife, Maud Hudson. He was also an in-demand session player who contributed to Canadian albums made by the Sadies and Daniel Lanois.
He experienced financial difficulties in his later years. Having sold his stake in the Band to Mr. Robertson and facing foreclosure in his home in New York’s Hudson Valley, he declared bankruptcy for a third time in 2001. In 2013, a landlord who said he was owed back rent sold some of Mr. Hudson’s possessions at a garage sale.
Mr. Hudson will be remembered as a brilliant musician who dazzled on his instrument but was reserved when not playing. His peculiarities were unthreatening and his quiet manner suggested wisdom.
“Garth was a presence,” Mr. Marcus said. “He said more in his soft voice, or his watching silence, than others did with loud claims or long stories. He knew so much more than he ever told.”
Eric Garth Hudson was born Aug. 2, 1937, in Windsor, Ont. He was raised in London, Ont., where his father, Fred Hudson, was an entomologist and a government farm inspector. His mother, Olive Luella Hudson (née Pentland), played piano.
Mr. Hudson holds one of his tenor saxophones in the cottage on his property in Woodstock, N.Y., on June 22, 2002. Though the Band's members have often been described as a brotherhood, Mr. Hudson was more avuncular than a sibling. He talked slowly, suffered from narcolepsy and was a devoted toolshed tinkerer.PAUL BUCKOWSKI/The Globe and Mail
In the family’s home was a player piano. “I guess I learned something from watching it,” Mr. Hudson later recalled, “because I could play Yankee Doodle by ear before taking lessons from Ms. Milligan on Richmond Street.” Ms. Milligan was piano teacher Nellie Milligan.
Although he sang with the boys’ choir at London’s St. Luke’s Anglican Church, young Mr. Hudson was expected to follow in his father’s footprints toward a career in the agricultural field. A high-school guidance counsellor told him that music should be nothing more than a glorified hobby.
The classically trained pianist performed country songs on the accordion as a teenager. He also played organ at church and in his uncle’s funeral parlour. “I found some true enjoyment in helping people get to the bottom of their feelings,” Mr. Hudson once said of the sepulchral hymns.
Mr. Hudson studied music theory at the University of Western Ontario, but bristled against the scholastic formality. “I didn’t like to practise too much,” Mr. Hudson said in Barney Hoskyns’s book on the Band, Across the Great Divide. “I found out that I could improvise, and to assist that I developed a method of ear training. I would memorize shapes and forms, and that’s one of the things that happens: You begin to see form.”
After quitting university, Mr. Hudson played with the Silhouettes, which morphed into Paul London and the Capers (and, later, the Kapers). They played ballrooms opening for big bands throughout southwestern Ontario before obtaining temporary work visas in order to play in Detroit and Chicago.
“We’d played a couple of months before the border patrol told us to go home,” Mr. Hudson told writer Jason Schneider for a 2002 feature in The Globe. “They told us we had to get permanent work visas, which at that time they mostly gave to hockey players and wrestlers. We told the union in Windsor about this – they liked us and wanted to help out – and they sent a letter to the Detroit union saying that if we weren’t allowed to play, then they wouldn’t allow any American acts to come into Canada.”
When he was recruited to join Mr. Hawkins’s band, his conservative parents did not approve of their son wasting his education on such an undignified pursuit as rock ‘n’ roll. A sweet-talking southerner, Mr. Hawkins convinced them that not only would their boy be a member of the group, he would be hired to teach his younger bandmates musical theory. His parents gave their approval, and Mr. Hudson earned an extra $10 a week from the other four Hawks for his professorial duties.
His parents had probably relaxed by the time they drove from Windsor to see the by-then world-famous Band play Toronto’s Massey Hall in 1970. But mothers never lose their worrying instinct. “We heard you play in your stocking feet,” she said to her son. “How have you been?” To which the musician replied, “I had a tooth out. Otherwise I guess I’m alright.”
Mr. Hudson attends The Recording Academy's Special Merit Awards ceremony on Feb. 9, 2008, in Los Angeles. A high-school guidance counsellor told him that music should be nothing more than a glorified hobby.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
He managed better than group members Mr. Manuel, Mr. Helm and Mr. Danko, who crashed automobiles and indulged in intoxicants. “I took a pass on all that,” Mr. Hudson said about the wild life in an interview with Maclean’s magazine. “I had things to do.”
Things such as soldering damaged patch cords on stage. “I’ve always carried a toolbox,” he said.
Mr. Hudson began playing the Lowrey organ upon joining the Band, who already had a piano player, Mr. Manuel. The instrument and Mr. Hudson’s unique musical ideas contributed to the group’s originality. “With Garth and that organ, we sounded like a rock ‘n’ roll orchestra,” Mr. Helm said in his autobiography, This Wheel’s on Fire. “It sounded like a fire-breathing dragon.”
In 2001, Mr. Hudson recorded the solo album The Sea to the North. In 2010, he performed on and co-produced Garth Hudson Presents: A Canadian Celebration of the Band, which featured Canadian artists including Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, Blue Rodeo, Cowboy Junkies, Great Big Sea, Hawksley Workman and Mary Margaret O’Hara covering songs that were recorded by the Band.
Mr. Hudson was nocturnal by nature. Singer-songwriter Doug Paisley once spent the night at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, where Mr. Hudson played Glenn Gould’s Steinway CD 318 concert grand piano, built in 1943. “We recorded from midnight to dawn, stepping out into an icy winter’s night so he could puff on his pipe,” Mr. Paisley said. “Garth found the famous piano’s light touch a bit too romantic. I think he preferred a piano that was more rock ‘n’ roll.”
His musically talented wife died in 2022. “I got the feeling Garth depended on Maud,” said concert promoter Gary Topp who presented the couple at Toronto’s Top ‘o the Senator for six shows in 2003.
On April 16, 2023, at a living room concert in Kingston, N.Y., Mr. Hudson performed in public for the final time. “He came inside in his wheelchair, and, to the bewilderment and amusement of the startled guests, played three songs, hugged a couple of people, and left,” Mr. Haust said.
As a member of the Band, Mr. Hudson was inducted into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, five years after the group was ushered into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. He is a Member of the Order of Canada.