Hudson, who played keyboard, organ, clavinet, saxophone, accordion, woodwinds and brass for the Band, began his tenure with the group when he, Danko, Manuel and Robertson served as Ronnie Hawkins’ backing band, the Hawks, in the late-1950s. In 1966, the quartet would become Bob Dylan’s de-facto, post-going electric supporting cast. Hudson was the recording engineer on Dylan and the Band’s late-1960s recordings, which would be released in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. The Band released two major albums of their own around that time, their 1968 debut Music From Big Pink and a the self-titled follow-up in 1969.
Hudson was the only member of the Band to never sing lead on any material, and he was as modest as they come, rarely speaking in interviews about his time in rock ‘n’ roll. In his memoir Testimony, Robertson wrote that Hudson “played brilliantly, in a more complex way than anybody we had ever jammed with.” “Most of us had picked up our instruments as kids and plowed ahead,” he continued, “but Garth was classically trained and could find musical avenues on the keyboard we didn’t know existed. It impress us deeply.” While Robertson was the Band’s primary songwriter, Hudson got a few licks in, composing tunes like “The Genetic Method,” “French Girls” and co-writing “Islands” with Robertson and Danko.
The primary Band lineup was active from 1958 until their hiatus in 1977, after The Last Waltz. They would try to regroup in 1983, but, after Manuel’s suicide in 1986, they sat on the shelf until 1993. They put out three records in the 1990s, all of which excluded Robertson. Hudson, however, remained faithful to the group in every iteration and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with his bandmates in 1964. The Recording Academy also awarded the Band with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008, and they inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1989. Garth’s longtime wife and collaborator, Maud Hudson, passed away in February 2022.
