On a quiet Tuesday morning in October 2008, fingers, slightly gnarled with time, dance expertly and effortlessly over the keys of a giant, old organ in an empty Midland church.
Sitting hunched over the keyboard on the organist's seat at St. Paul's United Church on King Street is Garth Hudson, arguably one of the most extraordinary musicians of the past century, a musician who reached stardom in the 1960s and '70s with the influential trailblazing supergroup The Band.
He played organ, piano, accordion, clavinet and saxophone with the group, which was four-fifths Canadian and an inspiration to a generation of musicians to follow.
The music seems to be pouring out of Hudson on this day in Midland, flowing from his fingers into the instrument. Most of it sounds improvised, and feels like he has no real control over its direction.
For fans of The Band, this is classic Garth, with the music seemingly making him, not him making the music.
Witnessing it close up, it's hard to rightfully describe his playing style with simple words, but beautifully complex comes to mind. It’s probably also the only way I’m able to describe Hudson himself.
Sadly, this eccentric musical genius died on Tuesday, Jan. 21 at an assisted-living facility in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 87.
He was the last surviving member of The Band, after guitarist and primary songwriter Robbie Robertson passed away in 2023.
Watching Hudson perform, just for his own entertainment, on that day in 2008 has been one of my favourite musical experiences ever.
He had been in Midland performing with his wife, Maud Hudson, who was a singer, when the Volvo station wagon they were travelling in broke down before they could return home.
While the repairs were being completed, organizers of the show the Hudsons had played took them to one of the local churches where both Garth and Maud performed impromptu numbers with a church choir. It was a magical melding of styles.
Maud died in 2022. They had been married for 35 years, and she was a fierce protector of Garth and his musical legacy.
Hudson was born in Windsor in 1937 and grew up in London, Ont. He belonged to an extended family whose members could play music.
I asked him if he thought musical ability is genetic and inherited more than it is learned.
“There was a certain talent there,” Hudson told me in a 2014 phone interview, “due to something inherited, I suppose, but largely due to encouragement from wherever.
“Folks old and young in the neighbourhood would say ‘he’s got the touch,' but I know what that is now, and I have seen it. You have to watch someone play. It may not seem important, but watch somebody play a medium-difficult piece, and it shows in the hands,” he added.
Hudson recalled his aunt, Verna, who lived in London, sitting down at the piano and playing one time when he was just a young boy.
“It was magnificent. I had not heard anybody play like that — popular songs with kind of a swing thing, and a great touch,” he said.
“So, I was able to watch her do that, and maybe that had something to do with it,” Hudson explained. “I think it somehow important to the young person to focus on someone’s hands for a short period of time, and it didn’t take long to see the various intensities. Aunt Verna had ‘the touch.'"
Cue up an equally thrilling Garth Hudson moment, as he began to play pieces of music to me over the phone, while discussing parts of different playing styles.
I have some of that piano playing recorded, thankfully, because I record my interviews.
Disaster partially struck, though, as the batteries in my audio recorder conked out while he was playing, and I feverishly scrambled to replace them in time to capture whatever I could of this personal performance from one of the musical greats of our time.
It couldn’t have happened at a worse possible time, really, and it was the only time batteries ever died on me during an interview. Such is life, I suppose.
Once we got the discussion back to his younger days and his first gigs, Hudson said he played the London Arena for roller skating on a couple of Saturdays, and he also cut his musical teeth playing at his uncle’s funeral parlour.
His aunt would play the funeral services sometimes, and other times a church organist, Theodore Grey, would come in to play as well.
They let Hudson play during 10 or 15 funerals, he said.
“I would learn the hymns, without making obvious mistakes, and I could do the pedals by that time, and I was around 16, I think ... I would get to play the hymns accurately, and there would be that pressure, you know, to perform and do it so it sounds good, conservatively," Hudson said.
Hudson was also known for his pioneering work with synthesizers. The first electronic instrument he ever saw or heard was in his uncle’s funeral parlour, which was a Hammond.
“And finally, one evening they let me play it. And that was something else,” Hudson said.
Not long after that, Hudson would play with fellow Londoner Paul "London" Hutchins and the group became Paul London and the Capers. Hudson described them as the second rock 'n' roll band in London. They would soon cut a record in Detroit.
He spoke of the group having much-needed “mobility” in those early days of playing cross-border gigs in nearby America.
“Getting there, getting around and getting out fast with the minimum of equipment when playing clubs, and dealing with the immigration (department in the U.S.) ... When they found out you were playing without a visa … they took us into the station at the border there at the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor,” Hudson said over the phone.
With more gigs under his belt and some lucky introductions to the right people, Hudson soon found himself as a member of The Hawks, backing up rock 'n' roll star Ronnie Hawkins, an Arkansas native who would adopt Canada as his permanent home.
The countless shows with Hawkins honed the group’s skills enough that they wanted to leave the nest and be their own band to chart their own course.
Prior to recording their own material, a highly publicized tour backing up Bob Dylan certainly didn't hurt them, either.
As The Band, Hudson and his cohorts (Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Robertson) would go on to inspire a generation of Americana roots rock acts, such as The Eagles, The Allman Brothers and pretty much everyone else you could think of forming a band in the 1970s and beyond.
Garth Hudson can certainly now rest easy after helping write the history of modern music.
Not bad for a humble and quiet man from southwestern Ontario.
