Stan Szelest left the Hawks a little over a year later and was replaced by Richard Manuel.
10 Facts About Stan Szelest
1.
2.
Stan Szelest went on to have a busy career as a session player with acts as diverse as fellow Hawks alumnus King Biscuit Boy to avant-garde former Velvet Underground member John Cale.
3.
Stan Szelest was in Lonnie Mack's band during the 1980s and played on Mack's albums Strike Like Lightning and Attack of the Killer V; he can be seen in several videos playing in Mack's band during that period.
4.
Stan Szelest joined The Band, playing live with them in 1990 and participating in rehearsals and writing for their new record deal with CBS Records.
5.
Stan Szelest died of a heart attack in 1991 while in Woodstock recording with Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson.
6.
Stan Szelest's piano playing can be heard on The Band's 1993 album Jericho.
7.
The album features the song "Too Soon Gone", co-written by Jules Shear after Stan Szelest handed him over 16 bars of a melody, which sat around Shear's Woodstock home.
8.
When Stan Szelest died, Shear was called by both Levon Helm and Rick Danko and asked to finish the song as a tribute to Stan Szelest.
9.
Apparently, Stan Szelest had begun the song as a tribute to the late Richard Manuel.
10.
Stan Szelest was inducted into The Buffalo Music Hall of Fame in 1986.