photo by Christopher Dunn

Democracy Now - click here to read and listen to Amy Goodman's interview with Utah Phillips from 2004.

OFFICIAL OBITUARY

“Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp Utah Phillips Dead at 73”

Nevada City, California:

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

Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco
photo by Steven Stone

WASHINGTON POST

U. Utah Phillips, 73; Folk Singer Championed the Working Class

By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 30, 2008; Page B07

U. Utah Phillips, 73, a Grammy-nominated folk singer, rabble-rouser and anarchist whose wild white beard recalled his years as a tramp, died of heart disease May 23 at his home in Nevada City, Calif.

Mr. Phillips, over four decades on the road, combined storytelling with song, describing the plight of the working class, the power of labor unions and the necessity of direct action. He dubbed himself the "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest," but, like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, his words, more than his baritone voice, carried authority. He had been a soldier, a railroader, a state archivist, a union organizer, founder of a homeless shelter and homeless himself.

He recorded the oft-overlooked value of rubber pockets, a necessity when stealing soup. His tall tale "Gaffing" was a rich illustration of populist scams. He honored the likes of Hood River Blackie and Fry Pan Jack and never hesitated to leaven his history lessons about the Ford Strike of 1932, the Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1910 and the Canine Corps of World War II with such hysterical stories as "Suspender" and "Blackie and the Duck."

His fans have posted dozens of videos of him or his songs online, and a new generation discovered him in the mid-1990s, when folk musician and entrepreneur Ani DiFranco edited about 100 hours of homemade tapes of his performances and blended them with electronic hip-hop, creating an album called "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere" (1996), and released it on her Righteous Babe label.

In 1999, he collaborated with DiFranco on the live album "Fellow Workers," which was nominated for a 2000 Grammy in the contemporary folk album category.

"He was a real storyteller in his performances. He was just a catalogue of people's history in the United States," DiFranco said this week in an interview. "He was so engaging on many, many levels."

Mr. Phillips was a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies), a radical union that called for all working people to unite. He ran unsuccessfully for president in 1976 as an anarchist, but he never voted -- except in 2004, when President Bush's policies so enraged him. Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Tom Waits and Arlo Guthrie sing Utah Phillips songs, but he refused to let Johnny Cash record his standards, his eldest son told the Sacramento Bee newspaper, because he didn't trust the music industry.

The Boston Globe called him "the kind of guy you'd want to sit next to on a long plane ride. Here's a rascal with a clutch of good songs that'll entertain you, educate you, and probably even get you fired up over the current state of politics."

He was born Bruce Phillips on May 15, 1935, in Cleveland to two labor organizers. His family moved in 1947 to Utah, where Mr. Phillips learned to play the ukulele from an instruction manual and took to the roads and rails of the West as a teenager. He adopted the name U. Utah Phillips in emulation of country vocalist T. Texas Tyler.

"I worked with lots of old drunks only fit to shovel gravel, but they all knew songs, and they showed me how to play them," he said.

Broke and out of work, he joined the Army in 1956 and was sent to Korea for three years. "I wanted to learn a trade, but all they taught me was how to shoot," he said in a Sing Out magazine interview. "What I really learned in the army was how to be a pacifist."

After his discharge, he began to drink heavily and ride the rails. He drew a distinction between what he did and the ways of hobos and bums, quoting the 19th-century physician to the poor, Ben Reitman.

"A hobo works and wanders, a tramp dreams and wanders, and a bum drinks and wanders," Mr. Phillips told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2006. "That's about right. I tramped. When I was on the freight trains, I wasn't looking for work. I was looking to go from place to place without paying any money."

He ended up at Salt Lake City's Joe Hill House, a shelter for tramps and itinerant workers run by a member of the Catholic Worker movement. He took a job at the Utah state archives, but his 1968 race for a U.S. Senate seat as the nominee of the Peace & Freedom Party cost him the job. He thought he was blacklisted.

"All I had was an old VW bus, my guitar, $75, and a head full of songs, old- and new-made," he wrote two weeks ago in a message to his local radio station, KVMR-FM. "Fortunately . . . I landed at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York. That seemed to be ground zero for folk music at the time. . . . It took me a solid two years to realize I was no longer an unemployed organizer, but a traveling folk singer and storyteller."

In 1973, folk fans discovered his spoken-word recording, "Moose Turd Pie," about the food he served to laborers on a railroad gang. The bluegrass duo Flatt & Scruggs recorded his train song "Starlight on the Rails," and Baez became the first of many to record the dark romantic ballad "Rock Salt and Nails," a song that became something of a folk and country standard.

Mr. Phillips settled in Nevada City, where he helped start the Peace and Justice Center and the Hospitality House, a local homeless shelter. After recording the spoken-word song "The Talking NPR Blues" in 2000, he launched a 100-episode syndicated radio show, "Loafer's Glory," and appeared periodically in the Washington area, where he urged audience members to sing along on tunes such as "Dump the Bosses."

Recording session for Fellow Workers - pictured (left to right): Ani DiFranco, Jason Mercer, Daren Hahn, Julie Wolf and Utah Phillips.
photo by Scot Fisher

New York Times

U. Utah Phillips, Folk Troubadour, Dies at 73

By JON PARELES
Published: May 27, 2008

Bruce Duncan Phillips, the itinerant folk singer, songwriter, storyteller and social activist who jokingly called himself U. Utah Phillips, “the Golden Voice of the Great Southwest,” died on Friday at his home in Nevada City, Calif. He was 73.

The cause was congestive heart failure, his family said in a statement.

An instinctively independent guitar-slinger and self-described anarchist with an affinity for history and a trove of one-liners, Mr. Phillips was a regular on the folk circuit from 1969 into the 21st century. “It is better to be likable than to be talented,“ he often said.

His sets were monologues that interspersed anecdotes, political jabs and wry observations with songs — some traditional, some from the labor movement and some he had written, like “Green Rolling Hills,” “All Used Up,” “The Telling Takes Me Home,” “Goodnight Loving Trail” and “Rocksalt and Nails.” His songs were recorded by Emmylou Harris, Tom Waits, Joan Baez, Waylon Jennings and Ani DiFranco, who signed him to her label, Righteous Babe, and produced two albums for him in the 1990s. Mr. Phillips sang about workers, historical events, the West and his great love, trains; for a while he lived in a railroad caboose.

At a performance last year, he said: “It’s nice to know there are some things in early 21st-century post-industrial culture that don’t change very fast. I am one of those.”

Mr. Phillips was born in 1935 in Cleveland, the son of labor organizers who moved to Utah in 1947. He was an Army private in the Korean War. In an interview with Works in Progress, a newspaper in Olympia, Wash., he said about the war’s aftermath: “I was very angry and frightened by what I’d seen and what I had done there. I got on the freight trains, and I rode for quite a while to try to sort myself out. I think I was drunk most of the time.“

He returned to Salt Lake City and ended up at Joe Hill House, a homeless shelter run by a Catholic anarchist, Ammon Hennacy, who shaped Mr. Phillips’s lifelong perspective. Mr. Phillips joined the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies, the internationalist union. Mr. Phillips wrote songs influenced by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and country singers like T. Texas Tyler (after which he modeled his U. Utah Phillips name). He worked at Joe Hill House and then for the State of Utah as an archivist. But after he ran for the United States Senate in 1968 on the independent Peace and Freedom ticket, he lost his state job and decided to try to make a living as a performer.

Encouraged by the singer Rosalie Sorrels, he moved to Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and found his way onto the circuit of coffeehouses, clubs and festivals that would sustain him for the next 38 years — “learning how to make a living, not a killing,” he said in a 2007 podcast. “I discovered a dignified, ancient, elegant trade, one where I could own what I do and never have to have a boss again.”

He recorded his first albums for the Philo label and later recorded for Red House, including an album of duets, “The Long Memory,” with Ms. Sorrels in 1996. He was a straightforward folk singer throughout his career. But for “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere” (Righteous Babe), Ms. DiFranco winnowed down a hundred hours of concert tapes and melded his songs and stories with electronic tracks influenced by hip-hop. “Fellow Workers,” a 1999 album with Ms. DiFranco and her band, was nominated for the Grammy Award for best contemporary folk album.

In the late 1980s, Mr. Phillips settled in Nevada City with his fourth wife, Joanna Robinson, who survives him along with his sons Duncan, of Salt Lake City, and Brendan, of Olympia, Wash.; his daughter, Morrigan Belle of Washington, D.C.; his stepsons Nicholas Tomb of Monterey, Calif., and Ian Durfee of Davis, Calif.; his brothers David, of Fairfield, Calif., Ed, of Cleveland, and Stuart Cohen, of Los Angeles; his sister, Deborah Cohen, of Lisbon, Portugal; and a grandchild, Brendan.

He started a series, “Loafer’s Glory,” on the Nevada City public radio station, KVMR-FM, which was syndicated nationally and collected on CDs on his own label, No Guff. In 2005 he opened Hospitality House, a nonprofit group that aids the homeless in collaboration with churches, in nearby Grass Valley, Calif. He learned he had heart disease in 2004, and health problems forced him to retire from touring in 2007.

“I don’t need fame and I don’t need power and I don’t need wealth,” he said last year. “I’m in need of friends, which I have found in abundance.”

Utah Phillips
photo by Christopher Dunn