Garth Hudson, founding member of the Band, dead at 87

January 22, 2025 45 1

Garth Hudson, the Band’s genius multi-instrumentalist and careful archivist, has died. He was 87. The Toronto Star confirmed that he passed away in his sleep this morning at a nursing home in Woodstock, New York

Hudson was born in Windsor, Ontario and raised by a musical family two hours away in London. He initially studied classical music, then fell in love with rock ‘n’ roll. “I played trumpet and saxophone through high school,” Hudson told the Woodstock Times. “Then somewhere about 1952, 1953, I began to pick up Alan Freed’s Moondog Matinee from Akron/Cleveland from 5:05 to 5:55. … So, I knew someone over there was having more fun than I was.”

He played in a series of local bands before attracting the attention of Ronnie Hawkins, who recruited Hudson to join a rockabilly-influenced predecessor to the Band called the Hawks. They later toured separately as Levon and the Hawks before Robertson, Danko and Richard Manuel began backing Bob Dylan as he transitioned from folk to rock.

Revered as a key architect of the Band’s dual keyboard sound — along with Stratford, Ont.‘s Richard Manuel — Hudson played organ, piano, accordion and occasionally saxophone and trumpet for the influential lineup that also included Toronto-born Jaime Robbie Robertson on guitar; Blayney, Ont.-born bassist Rick Danko; and drummer and singer Levon Helm, a native of Elaine, Ark. Hudson was widely regarded as the group’s secret weapon, adding his own resourceful stamp to the arrangements of such Band masterworks as “Up on Cripple Creek,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “The Weight.”

Garth Hudson was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in October 2014.