GARTH HUDSON,
1937-2025

Garth Hudson, the last surviving member of pioneering roots-rockers The Band, died today (1/21) at a nursing home in his longtime base of Woodstock, New York. He was 87.

Hudson, who was born in Windsor, Ontario, in 1937, began his career in a series of regional bands before joining The Hawks, the backing band for rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins. That group, which also included Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson, had a falling out with Hawkins over finances, but the members stuck together to become Bob Dylan’s band for the 1965 tour on which he “went electric.”

They parted after that run, but reconvened in Woodstock, where they recorded with Dylan in a studio Hudson built from scratch in a house that came to be known as “Big Pink.” The building was immortalized on 1968’s Music From Big Pink, the first album to use The Band's appropriately simple new handle. It only reached #30 on the album chart, but inspired scores of acts, both contemporaneously and in the decades to come.

It’s not unreasonable to say that the entire Americana genre grew from the seeds The Band planted on a remarkable series of albums that started with Big Pink, and continued through a self-titled album the following year, Stage Fright in 1970, Cahoots in 1971 and Moondog Matinee in 1973. They split in late 1976, leaving behind The Last Waltz, which was released two years later and remains one of the greatest live albums and concert films of all time.

When asked about his stylistic range in 2002, he told Toronto’s Globe and Mail, “Different musical styles are just like different languages. I’m able to play a lot of instruments so I can learn the languages. It’s all country music; it just depends on what country we’re talking about.”

Hudson was, in many ways, the linchpin of The Band, contributing some of rock’s most distinctive organ playing (showcased most famously on “Chest Fever”) as well as instruments as varied as saxophone, accordion, clavinet, piccolo and slide trumpet. While he arranged the band’s music, he was the only member who never took a lead vocal, and only wrote one song—the title track to the 1977 studio swan song Islands.

In 2003, he described his work in The Band to the Canadian magazine MacLean’s as "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.”

His bandmates were much kinder. Speaking to Barney Hoskyns for his 1993 book The Band: Across the Great Divide, Robertson said Hudson was “far and away the most advanced musician in rock and roll. He could just as easily have played with John Coltrane or the New York Symphony Orchestra as with us.”

After the split, and a short, less-than-fruitful reunion, Hudson traversed wide-ranging musical territory by performing and recording with dozens of A-listers, including Neko Case, Roger Waters, Leonard Cohen and Tom Petty.

While he weathered a series of financial setbacks in later life, declaring bankruptcy several times and losing many of his possessions in a lengthy fight with a landlord, Hudson stayed dedicated to his craft. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member performed at every opportunity, jamming regularly at New York venues in the ‘90s and ‘00s and putting in a memorable L.A. performance with the Wild Honey Orchestra, where he offered a jaw-dropping improvised piano solo.

He was preceded in death by Maud Hudson, his musical partner and wife of 43 years, who passed in 2022. He left no immediate survivors.