Everybody calls Garth Hudson, who died yesterday at 87, the Band’s secret weapon, but anybody who knows the Band at all knows he was far from secret. Fans knew he was what elevated the quintet above the level of a bar band backing Ronnie Hawkins, filling out the basic quartet sound with organ, accordion, saxophone, and other horns when needed, giving the music depth that belied its surface simplicity. It was like having a jack-of-all-trades session musician, and that’s what he became when the Band came undone.
Hudson was no secret, he was just quiet and didn’t give many interviews. He was the oldest member of the group and the only one with any classical training. He grew up playing organ at his uncle’s funeral parlor and accordion with country groups. He only joined the Hawks in 1961 because Ronnie Hawkins promised to buy him a Lowery organ and pay him an extra $10 a week. He did drugs a bit but dodged the debilitating drug habits that Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel developed, and managed to avoid feuding with anybody, even Robbie Robertson. He did once chase Todd Rundgren around a recording studio because the producer called him “old man” for nodding off. Rundgren was unaware Hudson had narcolepsy.
Lowery organs – Hudson played a series of them over the years – were his aural trademark in rock, where almost everyone else used Hammonds. He didn’t attract much attention behind his console except when the group played “Chest Fever.” He introduced the song with an organ solo that grew in concert over the years until it became its own song, called “The Genetic Method” and credited to Hudson. It was entirely improvised every time he played it. Sometimes it sounded country, or Gaelic, or baroque, or all of them with some jazz thrown in.
It got short shrift in “The Last Waltz,” but it was a highlight of “Rock of Ages,” the live album recorded at New York’s Academy of Music (later the Palladium and even later demolished to make way for NYU housing). The show was New Year’s Eve, so Hudson concluded with Auld Lang Syne, and his flourishes made even that hoary chestnut entertaining.
Here’s how it sounded six months earlier at Royal Albert Hall in London. It has the same name, but I don’t hear much repetition in the improvisations, except for one whisper of Auld Lang Syne.
Here’s how it sounded in Paris the month before, a concert released on the bonus disc of a 2021 re-release of “Cahoots.”
Tl;dl? They’re almost nothing alike, and all of the other live recordings you’ll find on YouTube sound unique, too. I’ve listened to a lot of Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman improvisations, and Hudson’s are right up there.
Hudson lost his Malibu home and recording studio in a 1978 wildfire (SoCal wildfires aren’t new) and in later years went bankrupt more than once. But he kept his chops until very late in the game. Here he is playing “The Weight” in Chicago in 2017 as a guest of Warren Haynes.
