Garth Hudson performs a synthesized “Greensleeves” The Last Waltz, November 25, 1976.
RIP Garth
For Garth from Don's Tunes
Garth Hudson, whose intricate swirls of Lowrey organ helped elevate the Band from rollicking juke-joint refugees into one of the most resonant and influential rock groups of the 1960s and ’70s, died on Tuesday in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 87 and the last surviving original member of the group.One of the most inventive keyboardists in the history of rock & roll, Hudson was born in London, Ontario, on Aug. 3, 1937 — years before his fellow Band members — to a pair of gifted musicians: His mother was a pianist, and his father played a variety of wind instruments, though he was employed as a farm inspector and entomologist.Hudson was a prodigy who once disassembled his father’s old pump organ and rebuilt it. He was playing accordion in a country band at age 12; his parents sent him to the Toronto Conservatory, where he learned to play Bach preludes; at an uncle’s funeral parlor, he played Anglican hymns. (“The Anglican church has the best musical traditions of any church that I know of,” he told author Barney Hoskyns in the Band biography Across the Great Divide.)With his reserved manner and technical skills, he lent the group a gravitas that set it apart from peers during the Summer of Love. The freewheeling sessions with Dylan at Big Pink — remarkably well-recorded by Hudson using an Uher reel-to-reel tape recorder — would eventually be documented on The Basement Tapes, with Hudson supplying buoyant accompaniment on “This Wheel’s on Fire” and “Million Dollar Bash,” among other standouts.- Rolling Stone
Photo by David Gahr
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