RIP Garth Hudson of The Band
They’re all gone. All the original members of The Band (plus their mentor Ronnie Hawkins) are no longer with us. The final original member to go is Garth Hudson, the ultra-talent multi-keyboardist whose Lowery organ growled and soared through so many Band songs. He was 87.
I met Garth several times over the last twenty years. He was extremely frail and had to be helped through the room by his wife, Maud. But when he settled at the piano, he came alive. His hands moved as if propelled by magic. Garth Hudson was one of the greatest keyboardists Canada (and the world) ever produced.
Garth was born in Windsor and grew up in a musical family. Classically trained in piano, he started writing his own music at 11. He once disassembled his father’s old pump organ and rebuilt it just to see how the thing worked. He loved organs, often recruited by his uncle to play hymns and his funeral home.
By 1956 he was in a London group called The Silhouettes, which evolved into Paul London and the Capers (later “The Kapers) who got gigs with Bill Haley and Johnny Cash. In 1960, he discovered the Lowery organ but couldn’t afford one. But when Ronnie Hawkins recruited him for The Hawks, Ronnie Hawkins agreed to buy him one. The Hawk also paid Garth an extra $10 per week in exchange for giving music lessons to the rest of the band.
Garth stayed with the Lowery (as opposed to the usual Hammond B-3 favoured by many rock musicians) and was always tinkering with it. He also performed on accordion, a Hoher clavinet, saxophone, and more.
After The Band broke up after their Last Waltz concert in 1976 and went through a few reunions in the 80s and 90s, Garth moved to making solo recordings, doing session work (Neko Case, Norah Jones, and Wilco were among his client), and accepting back-up gigs for artists like Roger Waters. For a while, he had his own recording studio in Malibu, but that was destroyed by a wildfire in 1978.
You’d think that he’d be set for life, but that wasn’t the case. In 2002, his home went into foreclosure, and he had to declare bankruptcy for the third time. From then on, he sustained himself by playing live. But even then that wasn’t enough. In a scene out of Storage Wars, in 2013, a landlord who had rented Garth a place to store some of his stuff, starting selling off whatever was in that space. It took a court order to stop that.
I wrote the liner notes to a Garth Hudson tribute album that featured Neil Young, Raine Maida, Ian Thornley, The Trews, Cowboy Junkies, Bruce Cockburn in more. That project only increased by appreciation for Garth’s talent.
Despite his apparent frailness, Garth hung on. He died today (January 21, 2025) in his sleep at a nursing home in Woodstock, New York. He was 87.