Garth Hudsona virtuoso multi-instrumentalist who is best known for his distinctive organ and saxophone playing the band was known. In his later years he remained in demand among young musicians. Including Neko Case, Norah Jones and Wilco. Gareth Hudson died early Tuesday morning at the Ten Broeck Center for Rehabilitation & Nursing in New York State at the age of 87.
Jan Haust, Hudson’s longtime friend and colleague, confirmed his death to Rolling Stones. He declined to name the cause of death. But he said Hudson “died peacefully” and “yesterday was a day of music and holding hands.”
Garth Hudson was a child prodigy
One of the most inventive keyboardists in rock ‘n’ roll history, Hudson was born in London, Ontario on August 3, 1937 – years before his bandmates – to two gifted musicians. His mother was a pianist and his father played a variety of wind instruments, although he worked as an agricultural inspector and entomologist.
Hudson was a child prodigy who once disassembled and reassembled his father’s old pump organ. At the age of 12 he played the accordion in a country band. His parents sent him to the Toronto Conservatory, where he learned to play Bach preludes. He played Anglican hymns at an uncle’s funeral home. (“The Anglican Church has the best musical traditions of any church I know of,” he told author Barney Hoskyns in the band’s biography Across the Great Divide.)
He soon developed a deep love for rock ‘n’ roll. As a member of the Capers, he played piano and saxophone. And accompanied tour stars like Johnny Cash and Bill Haley when they came to town. Rockabilly veteran Ronnie Hawkins eventually lured him to join his backing band, the Hawks, which also included Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. According to Robertson, “There is no question in my mind that Garth was by far the most progressive musician in rock ‘n’ roll at that time.” When Hudson came along, Helm wrote in his memoirs This Wheel’s on Fire: “We really thought we were the best band in the world.”
One of the greatest partnerships in rock
The Hawks soon parted ways with Hawkins, who was a strict disciplinarian, and joined Bob Dylan. Which started one of the greatest partnerships in rock. Hudson was part of the success. “Like anyone meeting Garth for the first time,” Helm wrote of the singer’s reaction to a Hawks performance, “Bob was blown away.” Hudson’s ornate fillers enhanced the folk singer’s poetry. “The wonderful thing about working with Dylan was the images in his lyrics,” Hudson said in an interview. “I got to play with those words.” As bootleg recordings show, his organ playing on “Ballad of a Thin Man” was literally in dialogue with the singer’s verses during these shows.
In the spring of 1967 – after Dylan’s motorcycle accident – the Hawks moved to Woodstock, New York, to the house known as Big Pink, and Hudson lived upstairs with Manuel and Danko. Hudson found the area magical and it would become his home for much of his life. He grew a long beard and became more of a musical mountain dweller than any of his bandmates, collecting guns and knives, skinning roadkilled animals and building a miniature pipe organ.
With his reserved manner and technical skills, he gave the group a seriousness that set them apart from other groups in the Summer of Love. The loose sessions with Dylan in Big Pink – remarkably well recorded by Hudson using a Uher tape recorder – were eventually recorded The Basement Tapes documented, with Hudson providing lively accompaniment on “This Wheel’s on Fire” and “Million Dollar Bash,” among others.
“Chest Fever”
Hudson’s primary keyboard during this period, relatively unique among rock musicians loyal to the Hammond B-3, was a Lowrey organ, which he constantly modified. When the Hawks released their debut LP in 1967 Music From Big Pink officially became a band, Hudson immortalized the Lowery’s church-like pipe organ tone with “Chest Fever” (sometimes referred to separately as “The Genetic Method”). The song – particularly the extended introduction – would become Hudson’s trademark. It begins with a fragment of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” before launching into an extended improvisation, a groundbreaking fusion of classical music, jazz wanderings and R&B grind that stands as the greatest organ performance in the history of rock applies. (Legend has it that Hudson never played the intro the same way twice throughout the band’s history.)
Hudson remained in California
Hudson also used an early version of the Hohner Clavinet in his instrumentation, which he famously ran through a wah-wah pedal for “Up on Cripple Creek” (which imitates the sound of a Jew’s harp) and the group’s cover of “Mystery Train.” . Until 1975 and the LP Northern Lights – Southern Cross Hudson had added numerous synthesizers to his arsenal in addition to his accordion, saxophones and other instruments.
At the time of the band’s farewell concert in 1976, which took place in The Last Waltz As documented, Hudson had moved to California with his wife Maud, where they lived on a ranch called the Big Oak Basin Dude Ranch. In 1978, a bushfire destroyed the house they were renovating. Hudson remained in California, working as a studio musician and touring regularly with various lineups of the band, which reunited in 1983 without Robbie Robertson. At the funeral of his bandmate Manuel, who committed suicide while on tour in 1986, Hudson played a selection of songs on the organ, including Anglican hymns and Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released”.
Hudson moved back to the Woodstock area in 1991, where he continued tinkering (including building a derringer handgun and casting his own bullets) and making music, playing with local bands and recording with a new generation of admirers that included Wilco, Norah Jones, Neko Case and Doug Paisley belonged. His solo debut, the fusion-oriented one The Sea to the Northhe released in 2001, followed by other projects including Garth Hudson Presents a Canadian Celebration of the Banda series of covers by various artists, in 2010.
“I escaped with my life”
Like other members of the band, Hudson struggled financially in later years. He filed for bankruptcy several times, and in 2013 A landlord who had rented him storage space sold many of his belongingsbefore it was stopped by a court order. Still, Hudson never showed bitterness about his fate, even after he sold his publishing rights to the band’s recordings to Robertson. “The deal was done. It was a good job. And I escaped with my life,” he said in an interview.
And the music never stopped. If anything, his playing only got better after the band ended. Writing about a performance in 2001, Greil Marcus noted that Hudson was playing ‘everywhere at once.’ As soon as you thought you got a tune — “Home Sweet Home,” “Shenandoah” — it disappeared. He was an avant-garde pianist in a 1915 grindhouse, forgotten chick flicks and In a Dark Castle epics that grew profound under his fingers.”