Garth Hudson, the great keyboardist, saxophone and accordion player and the last surviving member of the band, died on Tuesday. He is 87 years old.

The executor of Hudson's estate told him that Hudson died in his sleep at a nursing home in Woodstock, New York. toronto star.

The Canadian musician and his friends Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel supported Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dee before going independent Lun. They perfected a style that combined American roots, country, blues, R&B, gospel, rock and roll and (courtesy of Hudson) tenor saxophone and organ dirges.

One of the many highlights of the band's concerts was a bearded Hudson performing an organ solo as a mad genius, as well as a standard improvised intro to "Chest Fever" from their seminal 1968 debut album big pink music. The piece, written by Robertson and echoing the classical overtones of Bach, opened their performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.

"While 15 years ago, most rock organ players were incorporating dazzling gospel music into their organ playing, Hudson cultivated a more pastoral sound," keyboard magazine wrote in 1983. “With Billy Preston, Felix Cavaliere, Alan Price and, to a lesser extent, Ray Manzarek Manzarek and Doug Ingle Instead, Hudson works in the background, keeping the band's rhythm instruments and vocalists standing in the footlights while he spins an intricate web of music so deeply woven into the fabric of each song that it's nearly impossible to identify individually. Keyboard section.”

Eric Garth Hudson was born on August 2, 1937 in Windsor, Ontario. His parents, former World War I fighter pilots Fred James Hudson and Oliver Luella Pentland, both played musical instruments.

In 1940, the family moved to London, Ontario, where Hudson attended Braudale Public School, Medway High School, and the University of Western Ontario. Along the way, he studied classical piano and played the organ at St. Luke's Episcopal Church and at his uncle's funeral home.

As rock music took off in the late 1950s, Hudson performed with dance bands and began a three-year spell as a member of Paul London & the Capers in 1958.

Robertson had moved to Arkansas from his home in Toronto to play with Hawkins' back-up band, and in his 2016 memoir, witnesshe recalled pitching the country-rock speakers to whom Hudson had joined.

"Do you remember Garth Hudson? Well, I talked to him, and in addition to being a very skilled musician, he was a fascinating and unusual man," Robertson wrote. "He mentioned this new little gadget that would attach to the piano and sound like an organ. It would make our voices sound twice as loud."

He also mentioned that Hudson played a variety of saxophones. "Yeah, if there was an organ and horns, it would be pretty loud," Hawkins said.

However, the then 24-year-old Hudson did need some convincing to leave his parents' home. Crucially, Robertson recalled, Hudson was given an extra $10 a week to give music lessons to his bandmates. (This reassured his parents, who were concerned that their son was squandering his education.)

“It was a privilege to have Garth as a teacher,” Helm wrote in his 1993 memoir, This wheel is on firesaid he learned a lot about chord structure and harmony from Hudson.

“He would listen to a song on the radio in the Cadillac and tell us the chords to the song,” Helm recalled. "Complex chord structures? No problem. Garth would figure them out, and we found we could play anything."

From 1961 to '63, the Canadian town kids performed with Arkansas-born Helm and Hawkins throughout southern Ontario. Hudson brought his Leslie amps and an elaborate Lowry organ with a wah pedal.

After leaving Hawkins in early 1964, the quintet, now known as Levon and the Hawks (or simply the Canadian Squires) toured North America on their own. At one point, they were all arrested for marijuana possession, but only Danko was charged and placed on probation for a year.

Hudson, Robertson and Helm backed singer John Hammond on a 1965 album, and in September of that year the Eagles auditioned Dylan at Friar's Tavern on Yonge Street in Toronto. They were by his side when he switched to electric guitar for his 1965 and '66 tours, shocking the folk world.

During a stop at Toronto's Massey Hall, Dylan was jeered by folk music lovers in the audience, and one local critic criticized Dylan for playing with a "third-rate Yonge Street band."

"Only Garth seemed to understand why this was happening and saw it as a sign of the times," Robertson wrote in his memoir. The rest of the band took the criticism personally.

"It's a job. Play a stadium, play a theater," Hudson told McLean's Magazine 2002 profile. "My job is to provide the arrangement of the cushions underneath, the cushions behind the good poets, and the fillers. The same poems every night."

In 1967, the Eagles accompanied Dylan to his pink ranch house in Woodstock while he was recovering from a motorcycle accident. During the fall and winter of that year, they collaborated on bootleg recordings known as the "basement tapes."

"The typewriter would be there, and Bob would be tapping on it for a while, and then someone would come downstairs to check on the equipment, and eventually everyone would come down the pink stairs," Hudson recalled in a 2014 documentary to record more Dylan's presentation. He returns to the "Big Pink" house and visits the cellar.

In 1968, the five musicians became known simply as "The Band" and released big pink musicwhich rolling stones In 2003, the album ranked No. 34 on the list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Over the next eight years, they recorded and released eight albums and hits, including "The Weight," "Up on Cripple Creek" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."

The band called it an era, playing a legendary final concert on Thanksgiving 1976, as documented in the Martin Scorsese film the last waltz (1978), but Hudson embarked on a solo career and reunited with Helm and Danko for a new album, Jerichowas eventually released in 1993 and was followed by two more records.

He also contributed music to Scorsese's work angry bull (1980) and Philip Kaufman's the right thing (1983), and in 1980 composed a soundtrack titled Our Lady Queen of the Angels for an exhibition in Los Angeles by sculptor Tony Duquette It later became an album.

The band was inducted into the Canadian Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 with Hudson's trademark bushy, almost entirely gray beard. The unassuming organist used his address to name just about every musician he'd ever played with or been influenced by, including Gypsy King, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Maddy Waugh Tes, Marianne Faithful, Roger Waters, Jennifer Warnes, Cyndi Lauper and Clifford Scott.

In 2001, Hudson released his first solo album, the sea to the northBut he also filed for bankruptcy protection for the third time that year.

Attorney Michael Pinsky told freeman's daily He said his client was "bravely coping with multiple challenges, including the death of former partner Rick Danko". Danko died in December 1999 at the age of 55 after years of alcoholism and drug abuse.

In 2019, he was awarded the Order of Canada for his "unique musical contributions and mentorship of many emerging artists over the past 60 years."

In 2017, Hudson, then an unknown at Woodstock, participated in the "Last Waltz 40 Tour" to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the band's farewell concert. In April 2023, he performed "Sophisticated Lady" from his wheelchair on the piano at a house concert in Kingston, New York, hosted by keyboardist Sarah Perrotta.

His wife and regular guest, singer and actress Sister Maude Hudson, died in February 2022.