Garth Hudson, the keyboardist and last surviving member of The Band, has died. He was 87.
Hudson “passed away peacefully in his sleep” on Tuesday morning at a nursing home in Woodstock, New York, his estate executor confirmed to the Toronto Star.
Hudson was a founding member of The Band alongside Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel. Hudson was an organist, keyboardist, accordionist and saxophonist for the group.
The Band formed in Toronto in 1957 and gained recognition in the 1960s for their work with Bob Dylan. They broke up in 1977 but then reunited in 1983 without Robertson. The group stayed together until 1999 upon Danko’s death.
The Band released 10 studio albums, nine live albums and nine compilation albums. They were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
In 2008, they received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Some of their most popular songs include “The Weight,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Up on Cripple Creek” and “It Makes No Difference.”
Their farewell concert on Thanksgiving Day 1976 was turned into a 1978 movie, titled “The Last Waltz,” that was directed by Martin Scorsese.
All of Hudson’s former bandmates died before him.
Manuel died by suicide at age 42 in 1986. Danko passed away at age 55 in 1999. Helm died at age 71 in 2012. And Robertson died at age 80 in 2023.
As a solo artist, Hudson released two studio albums, one in 1980 and another in 2001, and a 2005 live album.
Hudson talked about his musical accomplishments in a 2003 interview with Canadian magazine Maclean’s.
“It was a job,” he said, per Variety. “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.”
In Robertson’s 2016 memoir, The Band’s guitarist and songwriter praised Hudson and his commitment to the group.
“He played brilliantly, in a more complex way than anybody we had ever jammed with,” Robertson wrote. “Most of us had just picked up our instruments as kids and plowed ahead, but Garth was classically trained and could find musical avenues on the keyboard we didn’t know existed. It impressed us deeply.”
Hudson was married to his wife Maud Hudson, who was also a musician, for 43 years. She died in February 2022.