Eric "Garth" HudsonCM (born August 2, 1937)[1] is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist best known as the keyboardist and occasional saxophonist for rock group the Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. He was a principal architect of the group's sound, described as "the most brilliant organist in the rock world"[2][3] by Keyboard magazine. With the deaths of Richard Manuel in 1986, Rick Danko in 1999, Levon Helm in 2012, and Robbie Robertson in 2023, Hudson is the last living original member of the Band.[4]
Hudson was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. His parents, Fred James Hudson and Olive Louella Pentland, were musicians. His mother played piano and accordion and sang. His father, a farm inspector who had fought as a fighter pilot in World War I, played drums, C melody saxophone, clarinet, flute and piano. Hudson moved with his family to London, Ontario, around 1940. Starting piano lessons at an early age, Hudson also played organ at his church and his uncle's funeral parlour, and performed country songs on the accordion[7] Classically trained in piano, music theory, harmony and counterpoint, Hudson wrote his first song at the age of eleven and first played professionally with dance bands in 1949, at the age of twelve. He attended Broughdale Public School and Medway High School before studying music (primarily Bach's chorales and The Well-Tempered Clavier) at the University of Western Ontario. During this period, he grew increasingly frustrated with the rigidity of the classical repertoire, leading him to drop out after a year.
In 1956, he joined London band the Silhouettes. The group relocated to the Windsor/Detroit area where work was more plentiful. It was there, in 1958, that the Silhouettes joined with fellow Londoner Paul "London" Hutchins and became Paul London and the Capers. Hudson primarily played saxophone in the group, and some piano in a style inspired by Johnnie Johnson, but saw his first Lowrey Organ at a show in Detroit and determined that he would get one. The group found moderate success and plenty of work, recording a few songs in Toronto in 1960, changing their name to "...Kapers" with a 'K', recording a few more songs at Chess Studios in Chicago.[8]
Hudson was first approached by Ronnie Hawkins and Levon Helm in the summer of 1961, after a Kapers show in London, and asked to join the Hawks, an offer he declined. The Hawks persisted, and in December 1961, Hudson agreed to join the band on two conditions: that Hawkins buy him a Lowrey organ, and that he be paid an extra $10 a week by each of the other band members to give music lessons to the other Hawks. This second condition was in part to justify the move to his parents, who he feared would think he was squandering his years of music education by playing in a rock and roll band.[9] Discussing the thinking behind his early fears in The Last Waltz, Hudson told interviewer-director Martin Scorsese: "There is a view that jazz is 'evil' because it comes from evil people, but actually the greatest priests on 52nd Street and on the streets of New York City were the musicians. They were doing the greatest healing work. They knew how to punch through music that would cure and make people feel good."[10]
When the 24-year-old Hudson joined the Hawks, the backing band for Ronnie Hawkins, the band already consisted of 21-year-old Levon Helm on drums, 18-year-old Robbie Robertson on guitar, 18-year-old Rick Danko on bass and 18-year-old Richard Manuel on piano. The lineup that would become the Band was now complete.
Lowrey organ
Hudson was one of the few organ players in rock and roll and rhythm and blues to eschew a Hammond organ. Upon joining the Hawks, Hudson took the opportunity to negotiate the procurement of a new Lowrey organ as part of his compensation. The Lowrey organ offered a different mix of features, and Hudson stayed with Lowrey right through Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, Bob Dylan and the Band, playing three different models: originally a Festival (FL) console, which was replaced by a Lincolnwood TSO-25 during 1969, and later still a horseshoe console H25 model, as depicted in The Last Waltz.[11]
The Band: 1965–1976
Under the strict supervision of Hawkins, the Hawks became an accomplished band. They split from Hawkins in 1963, recorded two singles and toured almost continually, playing in bars and clubs, usually billed as Levon and the Hawks. Hudson started work as a session musician in 1965, playing on John Hammond, Jr.'s So Many Roads along with Robertson (guitar) and Helm (drums).
Hudson performing with the Band, Hamburg, Germany, May 1971.
In August 1965, they were introduced to Bob Dylan by manager Albert Grossman's assistant, Mary Martin. In October, Dylan and the Hawks recorded the single "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?",[12] and in January 1966 they recorded material with Dylan for what would turn into the Blonde on Blonde album.[13] Dylan recruited the band to accompany him on his controversial 1966 "electric" tour of the United States, Australia and Europe. (An album of Dylan's 1966 performance with his band, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert, was finally released in 1998.) Subsequent to Bob Dylan's motorcycle accident in July 1966, the group settled in a pink house in West Saugerties, New York, near Woodstock.[14] Dylan was a frequent visitor, and Hudson's recordings of their collaborations resulted in The Basement Tapes.
By 1968, the group recorded its debut album, Music from Big Pink. The album was recorded in Los Angeles (at Capitol) and New York (at A&R Studio). Capitol originally announced that the group would be called the Crackers, but when Music From Big Pink was released they were officially named the Band. The album includes Hudson's organ showcase, "Chest Fever", a song that in the Band's live shows would be vastly expanded by a solo organ introduction, entitled "The Genetic Method", an improvisational work that would be played differently at each performance. An example can be heard on the live album Rock of Ages. Hudson is also adept at the accordion, which he played on some of the group's recordings, such as "Rockin Chair", from The Band; the traditional "Ain't No More Cane", from The Basement Tapes; Dylan's "When I Paint My Masterpiece"; and Bobby Charles's "Down South in New Orleans" during The Last Waltz. His saxophone solo work can be heard on such songs as "Tears of Rage" (from Big Pink) and "Unfaithful Servant" (from The Band). Hudson is credited with playing all of the brass and woodwinds on the studio version of "Ophelia" from the 1975 album Northern Lights - Southern Cross.[15] This album, the first to be recorded in the Band's Shangri-La recording studio in Malibu, California, also saw Hudson adding synthesizers to his arsenal of instruments.
Hudson is playing organ to the left, at the Last Waltz concert in 1976
Hudson provided innovative accompaniment. For example, the song "Up on Cripple Creek" features Hudson playing a clavinet through a wah-wah pedal to create a swampy sound reminiscent of a Jew's harp or the croak of a frog. This clavinet–wah wah pedal configuration was later adopted by many funk musicians.
The initial iteration of the Band made its final bow as a touring band with a lavish final concert on Thanksgiving Day 1976 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, an all-star tribute concert documented in The Last Waltz.[16]
The Band reformed: 1980s–1990s
The Band released one more album after the Last Waltz, Islands, and then dissolved. By then, Hudson had married his singer/actress wife, Maud. He had his own property, Big Oak Basin Dude Ranch, in Malibu, which was destroyed by wildfires in 1978, after extensive renovations that included an impressive studio.
He was active during this period as a session musician, performing on movie soundtracks and albums by many other artists, including Emmylou Harris, Van Morrison (Wavelength) and Leonard Cohen (Recent Songs). He composed music for Our Lady Queen of the Angels, a multimedia show created for the Los Angeles bicentennial in 1980. In the early 1980s he accompanied the Call on one of their albums and appeared with them in a music video which was played on MTV. He can be seen playing two separate keyboards in the Call's video of "the walls came down"
The Band reformed in 1983, with all the original members except Robbie Robertson.[17]Richard Manuel, who had lived at Hudson's ranch in 1978, died by suicide in 1986. Supplemented by a rotating roster of additional musicians, the Band continued to tour, releasing three albums in the 1990s.
Hudson released his first solo album, The Sea to the North, on September 11, 2001.[21] In 2002, with his home in foreclosure and Robertson having bought out his stake in the Band,[22] Hudson was forced to declare bankruptcy for the third time.[23] He continued to record and perform. On July 13, 2002, he was honoured with the Canada South Blues Society's Lifetime Achievement Award.[24]
In 2002, he joined with former Flying Burrito Brothers' pedal steel player Sneaky Pete Kleinow to form Burrito Deluxe, with Carlton Moody of the Moody Brothers on lead vocals and guitars, bassist Jeff "Stick" Davis of the Amazing Rhythm Aces and drummer Rick Lonow. The group recorded two albums, Georgia Peach and The Whole Enchilada, before Kleinow departed in 2004 because of health problems.
In 2005, Hudson formed his own 12-piece band, the Best!, with his wife, Maud (who died on February 28, 2022), on vocals. That same year, Garth and Maud Hudson released Live at the Wolf, a piano and vocal album recorded live at the Wolf Performance Hall in London, Ontario.
On November 20, 2005, Hudson received the Hamilton Music Award for Best Instrumentalist.[25]
Garth Hudson made his most recent public appearance on April 16, 2023, performing in Kingston, New York, in the Flower Hill House Concert No. 6, where he played Duke Ellington‘s “Sophisticated Lady”. [28]
Awards and honours
As a solo artist
Canada South Blues Society – Lifetime Achievement Award, 2002 [29]
Hamilton Music Scene – Instrumentalist of the Year, 2005 [30]
Dofasco Hamilton Music Awards – Lifetime of Achievement Award, 2007 [31]
Blues Hall of Fame – inducted as a "Legendary Blues Artist", 2012 [32]
Keyboard Magazine – "Garth Hudson: Legendary Organist with '60s Supergroup the Band" December 1983
Related Research Articles
The Band was a Canadian-American rock band formed in Toronto, Ontario, in 1967. It consisted of Canadians Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson, and American Levon Helm. The Band combined elements of Americana, folk, rock, jazz, country, and R&B, influencing musicians such as George Harrison, Elton John, the Grateful Dead, Eric Clapton and Wilco.
Jaime Royal "Robbie" Robertson was a Canadian musician. He was lead guitarist for Bob Dylan in the mid-late 1960s and early-mid 1970s, guitarist and songwriter with the Band from their inception until 1978, and a solo artist.
Richard Clare Danko was a Canadian musician, bassist, songwriter, and singer, best known as a founding member of The Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm was an American musician who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Ronald Cornett Hawkins was an American rock and roll singer, long based in Canada, whose career spanned more than half a century. His career began in Arkansas, United States, where he was born and raised. He found success in Ontario, Canada, and lived there for most of his life. He was highly influential in the establishment and evolution of rock music in Canada.
Richard George Manuel was a Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter, best known as a pianist and one of three lead singers in the Band, for which he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
The Last Waltz is the second live album by the Band, released on Warner Bros. Records in 1978, catalogue 3WS 3146. It is the soundtrack to the 1978 film of the same name, and the final album by the original configuration of the Band. It peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard 200.
Jubilation is the tenth and final studio album by Canadian/American rock group the Band. Recorded in the spring of 1998 in Levon Helm's home studio in Woodstock, New York, it was released on September 15, 1998. For the first time since the group reformed without guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson, there were more originals than covers. Songs include "Last Train to Memphis", featuring guest guitarist Eric Clapton, Garth Hudson's solo instrumental closer "French Girls", Rick Danko's "High Cotton" and the ode to Ronnie Hawkins, "White Cadillac".
"The Stones I Throw (Will Free All Men)" is a single by Levon and the Hawks, released in 1965 on Atco Records. It was their first release under this name, following their previous single under the name Canadian Squires. Seemingly a comment by Robbie Robertson in favor of the Civil Rights Movement, the song is carried by Garth Hudson's organ, and is far less rooted in the heavy R&B stylings of the group's other three single sides. It is the link between their days with Ronnie Hawkins and the group's breakout 1968 LP, Music from Big Pink. In December, 1965 the song reached #22 on the CHUM Chart.
Across the Great Divide is a box set by Canadian-American rock group The Band. Released in 1994, it consists of two discs of songs from the Band's first seven albums, and a third disc of rarities taken from various studio sessions and live performances. The set is now out of print, having been replaced by the five-CD/one-DVD box set A Musical History which was released in September 2005.
A Musical History is the second box set to anthologize Canadian-American rock group the Band. Released by Capitol Records on September 27, 2005, it features 111 tracks spread over five compact discs and one DVD. Roughly spanning the group's journey from 1961 to 1977, from their days behind Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan through the departure of Robbie Robertson and the first disbanding of the group. The set includes highlights from each of the group's first seven studio albums and both major live recordings and nearly forty rare or previously unreleased performances.
"This Wheel's on Fire" is a song written by Bob Dylan and Rick Danko. It was originally recorded by Dylan and the Band during their 1967 sessions, portions of which comprised the 1975 album, The Basement Tapes. The Band's own version appeared on their 1968 album, Music from Big Pink. Live versions by the Band appear on their 1972 live double album Rock of Ages, as well as the more complete four-CD-DVD version of that concert, Live at the Academy of Music 1971, and the 2002 Box Set of The Last Waltz.
"Chest Fever" is a song recorded by the Band on its 1968 debut, Music from Big Pink. It is, according to Peter Viney, a historian of the group, the album track that has appeared on the most subsequent live albums and compilations, second only to "The Weight".
"Stage Fright" is the title track of the Band's third album, Stage Fright. It features Rick Danko on lead vocals and was written by Robbie Robertson. According to author Barney Hoskyns, Robertson originally intended it to be sung by Richard Manuel but it became clear that the song was better suited to Danko's "nervous, tremulous voice."
Stanley Martin Szelest was an American musician from Buffalo, New York, known for founding an influential blues band in the 1950s and 1960s, Stan and the Ravens, and later as a keyboardist with Ronnie Hawkins and, briefly, with The Band.
"The Shape I'm In" is a song by The Band, first released on their 1970 album Stage Fright. It was written by Robbie Robertson, who did little to disguise the fact that the song's sense of dread and dissolution was about Richard Manuel, the song's principal singer. It became a regular feature in their concert repertoire, appearing on their live albums Rock of Ages, Before the Flood, and The Last Waltz. Author Neil Minturn described the song as "straightforward rock." Along with "The Weight," it is one of the Band's songs most performed by other artists. It has been recorded or performed by Bo Diddley, The Good Brothers, The Mekons, The Pointer Sisters, She & Him, Marty Stuart and Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats.
Let It Rock is a Juno Award-nominated album that documents American-Canadian singer Ronnie Hawkins's 60th birthday celebration and concert at Massey Hall in Toronto, Ontario. The concert took place on January 8, 1995, and featured performances by Hawkins, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Band and Larry Gowan. Jeff Healey sat in on guitar for most, if not all, of the performances. Hawkins's band, the Hawks, or permutations of it, backed most, if not all, of the acts. All of the musicians performing that night were collectively dubbed "the Rock ‘N’ Roll Orchestra". The concert is among the last recorded of both Perkins and Rick Danko of the Band. An eponymous video of the concert was also released.
"Sleeping" is a song by The Band, first released on their 1970 album Stage Fright. It was also released as the B-side to the "Stage Fright" single. It was co-written by Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel. This and “Just Another Whistle Stop” are the only two songs Manuel receives credit for on the album. Music critic Barney Hoskyns rates it as "one of Richard [Manuel's] liveliest performances" and "one of The Band's most intricate arrangements." The Band never featured the song on a live album.
So Many Roads is a 1965 studio album by John P. Hammond, backed by several musicians who would go on to form The Band.
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down: The Best of the Band Live in Concert is a 1990 compilation of live recordings from American roots rock group the Band released by CEMA Special Markets.
↑ Pp67-68, Chapter two "Who Do You Love: Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks" in Jason Schneider's book "Whispering Pines: The Northern Roots of American Music... From Hank Snow to The Band" ECW Press Toronto ISBN9781550228748 2009 First Edition hardcover
↑ P68, Chapter two "Who Do You Love: Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks" in Jason Schneider's book "Whispering Pines: The Northern Roots of American Music... From Hank Snow to The Band" ECW Press Toronto ISBN9781550228748 2009 First Edition hardcover
↑ P69, Chapter two "Who Do You Love: Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks" in Jason Schneider's book "Whispering Pines: The Northern Roots of American Music... From Hank Snow to The Band" ECW Press Toronto ISBN9781550228748 2009 First Edition hardcover
↑ Minturn, Neil (2005). The Last Waltz of The Band. Pendragon Press. p.94.
↑ Johnson, Brian D. (July 22, 2002). "Garth Hudson (Profile)". Maclean's.
↑ Heylin, 1996, Bob Dylan: A Life In Stolen Moments, pp. 83–84.
↑ Heylin, 1996, Bob Dylan: A Life In Stolen Moments, pp. 86–89.
↑ Sounes, Howard. Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (Grove Press: New York 2001), p. 221
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