A multi-instrumentalist, a key element in the recordings and arrangements that defined The Band as essential forebears of the Americana genre, and a man with a distinctly large physical presence, he also happened to be the only member of the group who didn’t contribute vocals. Content to reside in the background, he was equally reticent to do interviews.“It was a job,” Hudson once of his said of his efforts with The Band in a 2002 interview with the Canadian magazine Maclean’s. “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.”That statement offered yet another example of the understated honesty and humility with which Hudson approached his work. His bandmate Levon Helm once told producer John Simon that “The Band wouldn’t be The Band without him.”Simon, who produced The Band’s early efforts, once said in an interview with the Toronto Star, that Hudson was the “wild card” that made Music From Big Pink a favorite of such superstars as Eric Clapton and George Harrison.“Garth was essentially a colourist,” he continued. “He had an incredible palette.”
Lee Zimmerman / Rock n Roll Globe
Photo: The Estate Of David Gahr
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