[10 articles]
Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp Utah Phillips Dead at 73
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/phillips250508.html
by Jordan Fisher Smith and Molly Fisk
25/05/08
Utah Phillips, a seminal figure in American folk music who performed
extensively and tirelessly for audiences on two continents for 38
years, died Friday of congestive heart failure in Nevada City,
California, a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains where he
lived for the last 21 years with his wife, Joanna Robinson, a
freelance editor.
Born Bruce Duncan Phillips on May 15, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio, he was
the son of labor organizers. Whether through this early influence or
an early life that was not always tranquil or easy, by his twenties
Phillips demonstrated a lifelong concern with the living conditions
of working people. He was a proud member of the Industrial Workers
of the World, popularly known as "the Wobblies," an organizational
artifact of early twentieth-century labor struggles that has seen
renewed interest and growth in membership in the last decade, not in
small part due to his efforts to popularize it.
Phillips served as an Army private during the Korean War, an
experience he would later refer to as the turning point of his
life. Deeply affected by the devastation and human misery he had
witnessed, upon his return to the United States he began drifting,
riding freight trains around the country. His struggle would be
familiar today, when the difficulties of returning combat veterans
are more widely understood, but in the late fifties Phillips was left
to work them out for himself. Destitute and drinking, Phillips got
off a freight train in Salt Lake City and wound up at the Joe Hill
House, a homeless shelter operated by the anarchist Ammon Hennacy, a
member of the Catholic Worker movement and associate of Dorothy Day.
Phillips credited Hennacy and other social reformers he referred to
as his "elders" with having provided a philosophical framework around
which he later constructed songs and stories he intended as a
template his audiences could employ to understand their own political
and working lives. They were often hilarious, sometimes sad, but
never shallow.
"He made me understand that music must be more than cotton candy for
the ears," said John McCutcheon, a nationally-known folksinger and
close friend.
In the creation of his performing persona and work, Phillips drew
from influences as diverse as Borscht Belt comedian Myron Cohen,
folksingers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and Country stars Hank
Williams and T. Texas Tyler.
A stint as an archivist for the State of Utah in the 1960s taught
Phillips the discipline of historical research; beneath the simplest
and most folksy of his songs was a rigorous attention to detail and a
strong and carefully-crafted narrative structure. He was a voracious
reader in a surprising variety of fields.
Meanwhile, Phillips was working at Hennacy's Joe Hill house. In 1968
he ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom Party
ticket. The race was won by a Republican candidate, and Phillips was
seen by some Democrats as having split the vote. He subsequently
lost his job with the State of Utah, a process he described as "blacklisting."
Phillips left Utah for Saratoga Springs, New York, where he was
welcomed into a lively community of folk performers centered at the
Caffé Lena, operated by Lena Spencer.
"It was the coffeehouse, the place to perform. Everybody went
there. She fed everybody," said John "Che" Greenwood, a fellow
performer and friend.
Over the span of the nearly four decades that followed, Phillips
worked in what he referred to as "the Trade," developing an audience
of hundreds of thousands and performing in large and small cities
throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. His performing
partners included Rosalie Sorrels, Kate Wolf, John McCutcheon, and
Ani DiFranco.
"He was like an alchemist," said Sorrels, "He took the stories of
working people and railroad bums and he built them into work that was
influenced by writers like Thomas Wolfe, but then he gave it back, he
put it in language so the people whom the songs and stories were
about still had them, still owned them. He didn't believe in
stealing culture from the people it was about."
A single from Phillips's first record, "Moose Turd Pie," a rollicking
story about working on a railroad track gang, saw extensive airplay
in 1973. From then on, Phillips had work on the road. His extensive
writing and recording career included two albums with Ani DiFranco
which earned a Grammy nomination. Phillips's songs were performed
and recorded by Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Tom
Waits, Joe Ely, and others. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement
Award by the Folk Alliance in 1997.
Phillips, something of a perfectionist, claimed that he never lost
his stage fright before performances. He didn't want to lose it, he
said; it kept him improving.
Phillips began suffering from the effects of chronic heart disease in
2004, and as his illness kept him off the road at times, he started a
nationally syndicated folk-music radio show, "Loafer's Glory,"
produced at KVMR-FM and started a homeless shelter in his rural home
county, where down-on-their-luck men and women were sleeping under
the manzanita brush at the edge of town. Hospitality House opened in
2005 and continues to house 25 to 30 guests a night. In this way,
Phillips returned to the work of his mentor Hennacy in the last four
years of his life.
Phillips died at home, in bed, in his sleep, next to his wife. He is
survived by his son Duncan and daughter-in-law Bobette of Salt Lake
City, son Brendan of Olympia, Washington; daughter Morrigan Belle of
Washington, D.C.; stepson Nicholas Tomb of Monterrey, California;
stepson and daughter-in-law Ian Durfee and Mary Creasey of Davis,
California; brothers David Phillips of Fairfield, California, Ed
Phillips of Cleveland, Ohio, and Stuart Cohen of Los Angeles; sister
Deborah Cohen of Lisbon, Portugal; and a grandchild, Brendan. He was
preceded in death by his father Edwin Phillips and mother Kathleen,
and his stepfather, Syd Cohen.
The family requests memorial donations to Hospitality House, P.O. Box
3223, Grass Valley, California 95945 (530) 271-7144
www.hospitalityhouseshelter.org
--------
Bruce 'U. Utah' Phillips, 1935 - 2008
http://www.rabble.ca/arts_media.shtml?x=71821
by Bob Bossin
May 26, 2008
"The Golden Voice of the Great Southwest" sings no more. Bruce "U.
Utah" Phillips who, tongue firmly in cheek, billed himself that way,
died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Nevada City, CA, May 23.
He was 73.
Phillips was one of the deans of American folk music, a crucial link
to the working class movement and history of western North America,
and a cheerfully subversive social critic.
A proud, card-carrying Wobbly, Bruce made the songs and stories of
the American West his own. As indeed they were. When he returned home
from the Korean War, Phillips was broke in purse, body and spirit,
riding the rails, until he landed at Joe Hill House in Salt Lake
City, a shelter run by anarchist Ammon Hennacy of the Catholic
Workers movement. Hennacy's Marxism made sense of Phillip's
experience, and from it grew the knowledge and imagination Phillips
subsequently put on stage.
Starting in the late 1960s, "U. Utah Phillips, The Golden Voice of
the Great Southwest" sang the old, radical songs of the Little Red
Song Book, and told the old organizers' stories, working class yarns,
rants and tall tales. He performed them with the skill and panache of
Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain - and thereby rejuvenated them. At
hundreds of folk festivals and thousands of concerts, through a dozen
recordings, he passed the lore on to two generations of new
listeners, including young musicians like Ani De Franco.
Such became Phillips' reputation that, when the U.S. government
belatedly released Joe Hill's ashes, it was to Phillips that they gave them.
Bruce was not just a true folk singer, he was also a first-rate song
writer as well. His own songs, like "Starlight on the Rails," and
"Rocks, Salt and Nails" were covered by dozens of artists, including
Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez and Tom Waits.
After he was diagnosed with congestive heart disease in 1995, Bruce
performed less and less, until his health forced him to stop
performing altogether a year ago.
"Listen," Phillips wrote in 1995, when first forced to cancel his
extensive touring schedule, "for 25 years now, I have been part of a
family which has given me a living – not a killing, but a living – a
trade without bosses, in which I could own what I do, make all of the
creative decisions, be free to say and sing whatever I chose to...
Front porch, kitchen, back yard, drunk and sober, young and old,
coast-to-coast folk music, a world in which I discovered that I don't
need power, wealth, or fame. I need friends. And that's what I found
and still find."
"To hell with the mainstream," Bruce concluded. "It's polluted. What
purifies the mainstream? The little tributaries up in the wilderness
where the pure water flows. Better to be lost in the tributaries
known to a few, than mired in the mainstream, consumed with self-love
and the absurdity of greed. Please. Don't give our world up. It needs
to grow, yes – but subtly, out, through, under, quietly, like water
eroding stone, subversive, alive, happy."
Phillips is survived by his children and longtime partner, Johanna Robinson.
--------
Phillips had a big heart for the homeless
http://www.theunion.com/article/20080526/NEWS/970768021/1066/BUSINESS&parentprofile=-1
By Jeff Pelline
May 26, 2008
Though best known for his folk music and storytelling, Utah Phillips
also helped start the Hospitality House homeless shelter in Grass Valley.
He was present at the first meeting four years ago to form the
shelter and regularly would show up to visit guests and play his
guitar for them.
"He was immensely compassionate," said Cindy Maple, head of the
Hospitality House. "He seemed to understand what it meant to be lost
and searching (and) not to have solid ground under one's feet."
Hospitality House continues to house 25 to 30 guests per night at
churches throughout the area during the winter. A drop-in center
opens in the spring and summer.
"When we sat down to talk about creating a hospitality house, we
talked about works of mercy, we talked about compassion - not the
social service model of working with clients and case loads and stuff
like that - but of real hospitality," he said in an interview two years ago.
Phillips has experienced a homeless shelter firsthand.
During a difficult period in his life, he spent some time at the Joe
Hill House, a homeless shelter in Salt Lake City. It was operated by
the anarchist Ammon Hennacy, of the Catholic Worker movement.
"Phillips credited Hennacy and other social reformers he referred to
as his 'elders' with having provided a philosophical framework around
which he later constructed songs and stories he intended as a
template his audiences could employ to understand their own political
and working lives," said the obituary provided by his family.
--------
Folk singer Utah Phillips dies in California
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_9370911
Nate Carlisle and Lindsay Whitehurst
Article Last Updated: 05/24/2008
Folk singer and activist Bruce "Utah" Phillips, whose songs included
tales of the state's working class and tragedies, died Friday of
congestive heart failure.
Phillips, 73, died in Nevada City, Calif., where he resided.
While not among the biggest names in folk music, Phillips described
himself as the "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest" and was an
influence for artists such as Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joan
Baez and Tom Waits, who have recorded his songs. An album Phillips
recorded with Ani DiFranco received a Grammy nomination.
"Many artists extract from working and poor people for
authenticity," friend and environmental writer Jordan Fisher Smith
said. "He also gave it back ... he extracted the meaning and gave it
back to the people experiencing it."
Phillips songs included "John D. Lee," a recounting of the
Mountain Meadows Massacre. Another song, "Scofield Mine Disaster"
recalled the 1900 central Utah coal mine explosion that killed 200 people.
"A miner's life is hard I know," Phillips wrote and sang. "His
world is dark and far below/While he starves and goes in rags/He's
cheaper than the coal he digs."
Phillips son, Duncan Phillips, who lives in Salt Lake City, said
his father was enthralled with Utah's working class, particularly
Mormons and their folklore.
"They were kind of put aside and chased off like a lot of other
people in the world are," Duncan Phillips said. "He tried to look at
both sides of things and understand people and bring some common ground."
Born May 15, 1935, in Cleveland to labor organizer parents,
Bruce Phillips and his family came to Utah in 1947. His parents
became distributors for Paramount movie studio and owned the Capitol
Theatre and Tower Theatre until their deaths, Duncan Phillips said.
Bruce Phillips served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War.
Disturbed by the fighting, Bruce Phillips returned to the states and
was drinking and "bumming" on freight trains when he ended up in the
Joe Hill House, a Salt Lake City homeless shelter named for a labor organizer.
He went on to work as an archivist for the state, where he
learned much of Utah's history.
Ken Sanders, owner of Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City,
met Phillips in the 1960s.
"He was always working on the rights of others," he said. "He
spent an awful lot of his life bumming around the country, spent a
little of his life as a hobo. He was never in one city for a long time."
Bruce Phillips left Salt Lake City in 1969, believing that a
failed run for the U.S. Senate with the Peace and Freedom party left
him blacklisted.
"He tried to get work and everywhere turned him down," Duncan
Phillips said.
A short time later, he released his first album. After years of
touring, Bruce Phillips settled in Nevada City, Calif., with his
fourth wife Joanna Robinson.
He used his music and notoriety to remain an activist. In 2005,
he told The Tribune, "When I go play a town I haven't been to in a
while, I want them to send me the newspaper so I can get caught up on
the local issues. Then I go to the library and read up on the history
and economic base and economic distribution so I know the right
questions to ask."
Phillips played in Utah as recently as January 2007 at a folk
revival at Highland High School.
Phillips' other survivors include another son and a daughter,
several stepchildren, brothers and sisters and a grandchild. The
family requests memorial donations go to Hospitality House, a
homeless shelter founded by Phillips in Grass Valley, Calif.
Additional information is available at www.hospitalityhouseshelter.org.
--------
Singer Utah Phillips left a colorful legacy
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/964804.html
If your wages were low and your hands calloused, his songs – and his
heart – were all yours.
By Stephen Magagnini - smagagnini@sacbee.com
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Folk singer, anarchist, social reformer and man of the people Bruce
"Utah" Phillips died in his Nevada City home Friday night of
congestive heart failure.
Phillips, 73, was beloved on two continents for his big heart, along
with his wit, wisdom, wild, white beard and willingness to stand tall
for his beliefs.
He ran for president but never voted. Emmylou Harris, Waylon
Jennings, Joan Baez, Tom Waits and his friend Arlo Guthrie all sing
Utah Phillips songs, but he refused to let Johnny Cash make an album
of his standards, his eldest son said, because he didn't trust the
record industry.
Phillips, a onetime hobo and railroad tramp, reached out to the
homeless in Nevada County in 2005, when he and his wife, Joanna
Robinson, created a rotating homeless shelter at area churches.
"They're housing 25 to 30 people every night," said longtime friend
Jordan Fisher Smith. "Instead of asking the government to do it, they
solicited the help of their friends and neighbors and local churches
and just created services for these people that weren't there.
"Bruce at his core was an anarchist," said Smith, who befriended him
20 years ago when he moved to Nevada City. "The name 'Utah' stuck
because he'd lived in Utah, riding freights in the West."
In "All Used Up," Phillips sings of a boss who "used up my labor, he
used up my time, he plundered my body and squandered my mind. Then he
gave me a pension, some handouts and wine,
And told me I'm all used up...
"They use up the oil, they use up the trees
They use up the air and they use up the seas
But as long as I'm breathing they won't use up me
Don't tell me I'm all used up."
The son of labor organizers, Phillips was a lifelong member of the
Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies, Smith said.
He served in the Korean War, then came home devastated by the misery
he'd seen and began drinking and drifting.
In the late '50s, broke and broken-hearted, Phillips rolled into Salt
Lake City on a freight train and ended up at the Joe Hill House, a
homeless shelter run by anarchist Ammon Hennacy.
He helped out at Joe Hill House and became a pacifist and a performer
influenced by folk legends Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, country
stars Hank Williams, T. Texas Tyler, comic Myron Cohen and novelist
Thomas Wolfe, Smith said.
Phillips ran for U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom Ticket in 1968
and lost, then left Utah for Saratoga Springs and became a fixture at
the Caffe Lena.
After his first record, "Moose Turd Pie," about laying track for the
Sante Fe railroad, hit the airwaves in 1973, Phillips hit the road.
He toured North America and Europe, and was the first – and last –
performer at the iconic barn and roadhouse in Davis, the Palms
Playhouse, which closed in 2002 and was reborn in Winters.
About that time, Phillips began his struggle with chronic heart
disease but never lost his wit or passion for social justice.
At the Strawberry Music Festival last spring, Phillips mesmerized the
crowd using "a guitar handed down by my grandfather – unfortunately
he was still on the ladder when the cops came."
His oldest son, Duncan Phillips of Salt Lake City, who reunited with
him 15 years ago, said, "He was truly a man of the people – he
represented the working class, the working poor, the homeless, he was
part of them.
"He spoke for them in many ways, through song and activism. He's
probably the most principled person I'd ever met – he would stick to
what he believed in no matter what, and he'd sacrifice for it."
Duncan Phillips recalled the day Johnny Cash called "and wanted to
record his songs, and my dad wouldn't let Johnny do it because he
didn't like what the record industry stood for."
Mr. Phillips' own label was called "No Guff."
He ran for president in 1976 as an anarchist with a do-nothing
platform, and told Bee reporter Blair Anthony Robertson, "I guarantee
that if I took over the White House I would not do anything. I would
scratch my butt and shoot pool."
Mr. Phillips, for all his activism, "never voted," his son said. "He
said he cast a vote every day he went out in the world and did
something. If you want to make change, go out and actually do it
yourself. He didn't need to hand over any responsibility to
politicians who aren't beholden to the working class."
Duncan Phillips said he'll never forget all the people who would come
up to his dad in the lobby before the shows "and say he'd changed their lives."
Phillips, who declined a heart transplant earlier this year, died in
bed with his wife around 11:30 p.m.
"You would never know his problems by talking to him," he son said.
"He was a very engaging, very upbeat, very happy person. He was like
that when I last talked to him."
--
About the writer:
Call The Bee's Stephen Magagnini, (916) 321-1072.
--------
Folk music legend Utah Phillips dies at 73
http://www.theunion.com/article/20080524/NEWS/459535358
By Pat Butler
May 24, 2008
Folk music legend and peace and labor activist Utah Phillips died in
his sleep Friday night in his Nevada City home. He was 73.
Phillips had been suffering from a chronic heart disease since 2004.
His remarkable career included international acclaim for the stories
and songs he wrote about social and labor issues as well as his
travels as a hobo who ran the rails as a young man.
His music career stretched over 38 years. He has lived in Nevada City
for the past 21 years . Phillips established the Peace and Justice
Center in Nevada City and helped start the Hospitality House, which
provides shelter for homeless in the area.
Phillips, whose long white hair and beard and colorful outfits made
him a standout in any crowd, emerged as folk music performer after
the release in 1973 of his first album, "Good Though!," which
included the classic song "Moose Turd Pie." The debut album focused
on the railroad and social and labor unrest.
Bruce Phillips was born in May 15, 1935, in Cleveland , Ohio . He
grew up in Utah until he ran away from home as a teenager and
starting living as a hobo who rode the rails and wrote songs about
those experiences. He would later take the name U. Utah Phillips,
which he said was a tribute to musician T. Texas Tyler.
In 1956, he joined the Army and did a tour in Korea, which would
motivate him to become a peace activist. In 1968, he ran for the U.S.
Senate for the Peace and Freedom Party. He also was a card-carrying
member of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Some of his more notable recordings include "I've Got to Know"
(1991); the four-CD "Starlight on the Rails: A Songbook" (2005); and,
in collaboration with Ani DiFranco, "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere"
(1996), and "Fellow Worker" (1999), which was nominated for a Grammy
Award. Phillips also hosted a weekly National Public Radio program,
"Loafer's Glory: The Hobo Jungle of the Mind," until 2002.
In a letter on May 14 that was published on his blog, he wrote: "My
heart, which is enlarged and very weak, can't pump enough blood to
keep my body plunging forward at its usual 100 percent.
It allows me about 25 to 30 percent, which means I don't get around
very much or very easily anymore. I'm sustained (i.e., kept alive) by
a medication called Milrinone, which is contained in a pump that I
carry around with me in a shoulder bag."
Phillips is survived by his wife, Joanna. The family asks that
memorial donations be made to the Hospitality House in Grass Valley .
--------
Utah Takes the Last Train
http://pacificfreepress.com/content/view/2655/1/
25 May 2008
by Chris Chandler
In a matter of a few minutes Anne Feeney phoned me from an airport in
Houston. Al Grierson's "Lonely Deadhead Box-Car" was playing on
Random on my iPod. After our conversation, I went to check my email.
Jim Page was singing "Anna Mae." I had an email from Jim. I have
pasted it below. As I read it Utah sang "All Used Up." As I responded
to Jim's Email Arlo Guthrie sang "Hobo's Lullaby."
"In the night of May 23, 2008, Bruce Duncan Phillips died in great
peace, asleep in his bed in Nevada City, California, with his wife
Joanna by his side."
Amazingly, at the very same instant that the scholar Bruce Phillips
finally discovered his angle of repose, U. Utah Phillips flagged a
westbound freight train. Yes, a mighty fast rattler, on a long
west-bound track. He needed no ticket, he was welcomed on board.
The immediate family and neighbors of Bruce Phillips, along with any
Wobblies who happen to be passing through, are gathering in Nevada
City to do all the things that must be done.
Please give them the quiet respect they so need right now.
But you can wave "So Long!" to Utah when that train moves west.
-
Comments
Utah
by David Rovics
May 25, 2008
It was a couple years later that I first really discovered Utah
Phillips, the songwriter. I had by this time immersed myself with
great enthusiasm in the work of many contemporary performers in what
gets called the folk music scene, and had developed a keen
appreciation for the varied and brilliant songwriting of Jim Page and
others. Then, in 1991, I came across Utah's new cassette, I've Got To
Know, and soon thereafter heard a copy of a much earlier recording,
Good Though.
Whether he's recounting stories from his own experiences or those of
others doesn't matter. There is no need to know, for in the many
hours Utah spent in his troubled youth talking with old, long-dead
veterans of the rails and the IWW campaigns, a bridge from now to
then was formed in this person, in his pen and in his deep, resonant
voice. In Good Though I heard the distant past breathing and full of
life in Utah's own compositions, just as they breathed in his
renditions of older songs.
In I've Got To Know I heard an eloquent and current voice of
opposition to the American Empire and the bombing of Iraq, rolled
together seamlessly with the voices of deserters, draft dodgers and
tax resisters of the previous century.
In reference to the power of lying propaganda, a friend of mine used
to say it takes ten minutes of truth to counteract 24 hours of lies.
But upon first hearing Utah's song, "Yellow Ribbon," it seemed to me
that perhaps that ratio didn't give the power of truth enough credit.
It seemed to me that if the modern soldiers of the empire would have
a chance to hear Utah's monologues there about his anguish after his
time in the Army in Korea, or the breathtakingly simple depiction of
life under the junta in El Salvador in his song "Rice and Beans,"
they would just have to quit the military.
Utah made it clear in word and in deed that steeping yourself in the
tradition was required of any good practitioner of the craft, and I
did my best to follow in his footsteps and do just that. I learned
lots of Utah's songs as well as the old songs he was playing. Making
a living busking in the Boston subways for years, I ran into other
folks who were doing just that, as well as writing great songs, such
as Nathan Phillips (no relation). Nathan was from West Virginia, and
did haunting versions of "The Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia,"
"Larimer Street," "All Used Up," and other songs. In different T
stops at the same time, Nathan and I could often be found both
singing the songs of Utah Phillips for the passersby.
Traveling around the US in the 1990's and since then, it seemed that
Utah's music had, on a musical level, had the same kind of impact
that Zinn's People's History or somewhat earlier works such as Jeremy
Brecher's book, Strike!, had had in written form -- bringing alive
vital history that had been all but forgotten. With Ani DiFranco's
collaboration with Utah, this became doubly true, seemingly
overnight, and this man who had had a loyal cult following before
suddenly had, if not what might be called popularity, at least a
loyal cult following that was now twice as big as it had been in the
pre-Ani era.
I had had the pleasure of hearing Utah live in concert only once in
the early 90's, doing a show with another great songwriter, Charlie
King, in the Boston area. I was looking forward to hearing him play
again around there in 1995, but what was to be a Utah Phillips
concert turned into a benefit for Utah's medical expenses, when he
had to suddenly drastically cut down on his touring, due to heart
problems. I think there were about twenty different performers doing
renditions of Utah Phillips' songs at Club Passim that night. I did
"Yellow Ribbon."
Traveling in the same circles and putting out CDs on the same record
label, it was fairly inevitable that we'd meet eventually. The first
time was several years ago, if memory serves me, behind the stage at
the annual protest against the School of the Americas in Columbus,
Georgia. I think I successfully avoided seeming too painfully
star-struck. Utah was complaining to me earnestly about how he didn't
know what to do at these protests, didn't feel like he had good
protest material. I think he did just fine, though I can't recall what he did.
Utah lived in Nevada City, and the last time I was there he came to
the community radio station while I was appearing on a show. This was
soon after Katrina, and I remember singing my song, "New Orleans,"
and Utah saying embarrassingly nice things. I was on a little tour
with Norman Solomon speaking and me singing, and we had done an event
the night before in town, which Utah was too tired to attend, if I recall.
Me, Utah, Norman, and my companion, Reiko, went over to a nice
breakfast place after the radio show, talked and ate breakfast. Utah
did most of the talking, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that
his use of mysterious hobo colloquialisms and frequent references to
obscure historical characters in twentieth-century American anarchist
history was something he did off stage as well as on.
I've passed near enough to that part of California many times since
then. Called once when I was nearby and he was out of town, doing a
show in Boston. Otherwise I just thought about calling and dropping
by, but didn't take the time. Life was happening, and taking a day or
two off in Nevada City was always something that I never quite seemed
to find the time for. Always figured next time I'll have more time,
I'll call him then. It had been thirteen years since he found out
about his heart problems, and he hadn't kicked the bucket yet... Of
course, now I wish I had taken the time when I had the chance, and
I'm sure there are many other people who feel the same way.
In any case, for those of us who knew his music, whether from
recordings or concerts, for those of us who knew Utah from his
stories on or off the stage, whether we knew him as that human bridge
to the radical labor movement of yesterday, or as the voice of the
modern-day hobos, or as that funky old guy that Ani did a couple of
CDs with, Utah Phillips will be remembered and treasured by many.
He was undeniably a sort of musical-political-historical institution
in his own day. He said he was a rumor in his own time. No question,
one man's rumor is another man's legend, but who cares, it's just
words anyway.
http://www.davidrovics.com
--------
From hobo to fame
http://www.theunion.com/article/20080526/NEWS/88594631/1066/BUSINESS&parentprofile=-1
Memorial service for folk music legend set for Sunday in Nevada City
By Jeff Pelline and Pat Butler
May 26, 2008
A memorial service is being planned for Sunday in Nevada City for
Bruce "Utah" Phillips, the folk music legend and peace and labor
activist who died Friday night in his Nevada City home.
Phillips, 73, died at 11:30 p.m. of congestive heart failure - a
condition he had suffered from for years.
"Phillips died at home, in bed, in his sleep, next to his wife,"
according to his family, which was in seclusion Sunday at his home
about a mile from downtown Nevada City.
The family is working on further details of the memorial, including
its exact location and time, for one of the area's most famous citizens.
The folk musician's remarkable career included international acclaim
for the stories and songs he wrote about social and labor issues, as
well as his career as a hobo who ran the rails as a young man. He
also once ran for the U.S. Senate.
Phillips' musical career stretched over 38 years and his songs were
performed by Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings and Joan Baez. He earned
a Grammy nomination for an album he recorded with Ani DiFranco.
He once told The Union that "folk music is the glue that holds the
community together," as people gather to share food, music and to dance.
The musician lived in Nevada City for the past 21 years and helped
start the Hospitality House homeless shelter and the Peace and Justice Center.
Up until his death, Phillips was managing to "get out a good bit," as
he wrote in a letter on a Web log less than two weeks ago. The
weekend before last, he attended one of his favorite pastimes - a
Little League game at Pioneer Park in Nevada City.
"I knew he wasn't feeling well all week," said Cindy Maple, the
executive director of Hospitality House, who sat with Phillips at the
game to watch her 12-year-old son play ball. "But he had his usual
cute sense of humor."
Maple and Phillips were close friends, having worked together to open
the Hospitality House in Grass Valley.
"My son was on the Dodgers, but anytime they were playing the
Indians, Utah was conflicted," she said. "Utah loved the Indians."
No wonder, because Phillips was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 15,
1935, to labor organizer parents.
He was born Bruce Duncan Phillips, but adopted the name "Utah" from
where he grew up. He later took the name U. Utah Phillips, which was
a tribute to fellow musician T. Texas Tyler.
Phillips ran away from home as a teenager and started living as a
hobo who rode the rails and wrote songs about his experiences.
In 1956, he joined the Army and did a tour in Korea, which would
motivate him to become a peace activist. In 1968, he ran for the U.S.
Senate for the Peace and Freedom Party. He also was a card-carrying
member of the Industrial Workers of America, or the "wobblies."
Moose Turd Pie
Phillips, whose long, white hair and beard and colorful outfits made
him a standout in any crowd, emerged as a folk music performer after
the release in 1973 of his first album, "Good Though!," which
included the classic song "Moose Turd Pie." The song recounts a tale
of serving moose excrements to fellow laborers, daring them to
complain about the food.
Some of his more notable recordings included "I've Got to Know"
(1991); the four-CD "Starlight on the Rails: A Songbook" (2005); and
in collaboration with DiFranco, "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere" (1996)
and "Fellow Worker" (1999), which was nominated for the Grammy.
"Utah has such a wonderfully eloquent storytelling style," DiFranco
told Mother Jones magazine in 1999, adding "Utah is such a wonderful
teacher when it comes to American history, so I've certainly learned
a lot of things from him and our friendship along the way."
Other musicians also praised Phillips.
"He made me understand that music must be more than cotton candy for
the ears," said John McCutcheon, a nationally known folk singer and
close friend.
Heart weakened
In the letter published on his blog, Phillips wrote: "My heart, which
is enlarged and very weak, can't pump enough blood to keep my body
plunging forward at its usual 100 percent.
"It allows me about 25 to 30 percent, which means I don't get around
very much or very easily anymore. I'm sustained (i.e. kept alive) by
a medication called Milrinone, which is contained in a pump that I
carry around with me in a shoulder bag."
In January, "after a day of great honesty," Phillips decided against
a heart transplant. He spent a month in a San Francisco hospital in
February before returning home.
"As long as I'm on the planet, I'm not going to turn into a
vegetable," he said upon returning home. "It's my town. Nevada City
is a primary seed-bed for community organizing."
He is survived by his son Duncan and daughter-in-law Bobette of Salt
Lake City, son Brendan of Olympia, Wash.; daughter Morrigan Belle of
Washington, D.C.; stepson Nicholas Tomb of Monterey; stepson and
daughter-in-law Ian Durfee and Mary Creasey of Davis; brothers David
Phillips of Fairfield, Ed Phillips of Cleveland and Stuart Cohen of
Los Angeles; sister Deborah Cohen of Lisbon, Portugal; and a
grandchild, Brendan.
He was preceded in death by his father Edwin Phillips and mother
Kathleen, and his stepfather, Syd Cohen.
The family requests memorial donations to Hospitality House, P.O. Box
3223, Grass Valley, Calif. 95945, (530) 271-7144 or
www.hospitalityhouseshelter.org.
LIFE OF UTAH PHILLIPS
Folk music legend who performed for 38 years. He drew his influences
from folk singers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and country stars
Hank Williams and T. Texas Tyler.
His songs were performed by Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joen
Baez, Tom Waits, Joe Ely and others. He received a Grammy nomination
and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Folk Alliance in 1997.
Born on May 15, 1935, in Cleveland, Ohio, and died on May 23, 2008,
in Nevada City.
He lived in Nevada City for the past 21 years with his wife, Joanna
Robinson, a freelance editor.
--------
UTAH PHILLIPS: May 15, 1935 - May 24, 2008
http://www.flamesofdiscontent.org/
By John Pietaro
Utah spoke directly to each of us in that filled
auditorium on April 24 of this year. It didn't matter
that it was his disembodied voice, speaking over a cell
phone held up to a microphone, held aloft by Pete
Seeger, one of the event's headliners. The strength of
Phillips' message message was as clear as the vitality
in his tone. I was happy to be there to hear Utah's
response to our benefit concert on his behalf, happier
still to witness the warm exchange between he and
Seeger, another elder of fighting the good fight. But
this room on that sunny spring day in Rosendale New York
was dedicated Utah Phillips; we'd all come with the
intention of helping this man who'd been there for the
greater "us" for decades. Utah told us of his life and
plans for the future. Sure, he sounded tired, but none
could accept that Utah would not get through this
challenge. He told us so. None would believe that he
would pass away just about a month later. Damn, at least
we can say that it took a lot to silence Utah. But the
echo of his work rings loudly, as sonorous as the music
onstage that day from Pete, Dar Williams, Redwood Moose,
Sarah Underhill, Norm Wennet, Bill Vanaver, my own
Flames of Discontent and others.
Utah Phillips was born Bruce Duncan Phillips in
Cleveland Ohio in 1935. Not simply because he was a
Depression baby, not only due to the powerful example of
his parents'work in the militant labor movement, but
perhaps due to a calling, Phillips decided early on that
he would dedicate his time to social justice. By the
mid-1950s, he was a rambling veteran of the Korean War,
damaged from the sites and sounds around him, a drifter
with a taste for drink. Ending up in Salt Lake City,
twenty year-old Phillips arrived at the Joe Hill House,
a shelter that was a part of the Catholic Worker
movement facilitated by one Ammon Hennacy, an anarchist
and associate of noted humanist and socialist Dorothy
Day. Hennacy had a tremendous impact on the young
Phillips, not only aiding him to get clean and focused,
but by way of his radical beliefs and tales. Phillips
absorbed these ideas and, adding in the influence of
Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Borscht Belt comedians,
raconteurs and various country musicians, Phillips
"created" U. Utah Phillips, the character whose life
he'd maintain as his own throughout the decades. Hennacy
also introduced Phillips to the Industrial Workers of
the World and Utah became a life-long dues-paying member
and activist with this global labor organization. He
would later use many of Hennacy's teachings and
statements in his oratories, at once satiric,
sentimental and revolutionary.
Though Phillips engaged in several noted career journeys
(including an unsuccessful run in `68 for US Senate on
the Peace and Freedom ticket), he will always be
remembered as a folksinger. Making full use of the
amazing heritage of song within the Wobbly repertoire,
Utah came to champion the IWW and their Little Red
Songbooks. His rounded baritone adorned more than one
collection of IWW recordings. In between writing many
powerful originals songs such as "All Used Up", Utah
brought to life the ballads of Joe Hill, Ralph Chaplin,
T-Bone Slim and the "Unknown Proletariat", who could
have been most any of us. But Utah never failed to see
the importance in the smallest of the small.
Oddly enough, Utah became something of a cult figure
with the college crowd in recent years. Two strong CDs
with Ani DiFranco brought him a bit of notoriety, but
Utah remained, well-Utah. Sometimes singing and fighting
are just that interchangeable. Each time we lift up a
guitar, put pen to paper, speak our mind or simply count
our blessings, let's pause a moment for Utah Phillips. .
--
John Pietaro is a labor organizer and cultural worker
from New York www.flamesofdiscontent.org
--------
Folk singer Utah Phillips dies at 73
http://origin.mercurynews.com/news/ci_9373739?nclick_check=1
By JORDAN ROBERTSON Associated Press Writer
05/24/2008
SAN FRANCISCOFolk singer Bruce "U. Utah" Phillips, a freewheeling
storyteller and Grammy-nominated musician known for his extensive
touring over nearly 40 years and strong support of peace groups and
labor unions in his works, has died. He was 73.
Phillips died of congestive heart failure late Friday night at his
home in Nevada City, Calif., a small town in the Sierra Nevada
mountains located about 60 miles north of Sacramento, family
spokesman Jordan Fisher Smith told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Phillips leaves behind his wife, Joanna Robinson, and three children
of his own and two stepsons.
Phillips had been suffering from chronic heart disease since 2004,
Smith said. His health problems cut short the touring that had
characterized much of Phillips' career, though he kept in touch with
fans over the last few years of his life through a series of podcasts
and blog postings written by one of his sons, Duncan.
Phillips, the son of labor organizers, once ran for a seat on the
U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket and was known as a
champion for the rights of working people and a comedian on stage.
One of Phillips' best-known songs in folk circles is "Moose Turd
Pie," a single from his first album that recounts Phillips' tale of
serving moose excrement to fellow laborers as a cook in a railroad
track gang to dare them to complain about the food. Smith said strong
radio support for the tune in the early 1970s helped Phillips book
steady shows in other cities and launch his career on the road.
That career spanned nearly four decades, and Phillips' collaboration
with Ani DiFranco on the labor-themed 1999 album "Fellow Workers"
earned them a Grammy award nomination in 2000 for best contemporary
folk album.
As Phillips' health problems worsened in recent years, he stepped
away from the touring life and focused on his health along with
starting a folk music radio show and helping establish a homeless shelter.
A funeral date hasn't been set yet, Smith said.
"He was a man who was amazingly funny," Smith said. "And what I saw
in the last two years of his life was a human being even more
beautiful than he was in performance."
.
