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Garth Hudson, a Canadian-born keyboardist who helped shape the roots rock sound of The Band, the revered group that performed with Bob Dylan and fused folk, rock, R&B and the blues while helping pioneer the genre known as Americana, has died.
He was 87, and the last surviving member of the band’s classic lineup.
The Band confirmed his death in social media posts on Tuesday but did not share additional details. The Toronto Star reported that he died Jan. 21 at a nursing home in Woodstock, New York, citing Hudson’s estate executor.
A versatile musician who played the organ, saxophone and accordion in addition to the keyboards, Hudson was a musical architect of The Band, helping shape the sound of songs like “Up on Cripple Creek,” from the group’s 1969 self-titled album, and “Chest Fever,” which opened with his organ solo and became a staple of The Band’s live shows.
Hudson was part of a lineup that included bassist Rick Danko, drummer Levon Helm, pianist Richard Manuel and guitarist Robbie Robertson. With the exception of Helm, an American, all of the group’s foundational members were Canadian. But they shared a sensibility informed by a love of traditional music, much of it written and recorded in the United States, and by a desire to combine the old and the new in albums that brought them to the forefront of late ’60s rock.
“The Band, more than any other group, put rock and roll back in touch with its roots,” the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame said in inducting Mr. Hudson and his bandmates in 1994.