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Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp Utah Phillips Dead at 73

by via utahphillips.org
The offical Obituary as provided by the family. May 24, 2008

"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

Jordan Fisher Smith and Molly Fisk

Molly Fisk, 530.277.4686 molly@mollyfisk.com Jordan Fisher Smith 530.277.3087 jordanfs@gv.net

Word document here: http://www.utahphillips.org/utahphillipsdeadat73.doc PDF version: http://www.utahphillips.org/utahphillipsdeadat73.pdf

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Comments (Hide Comments)
by brightpathvideo
I wanna cry, and I'm going too. Then I'm gonna organize or participate in the process.
by via Utah Phillips Blog
Good morning from Nevada City.
Thank you everyone for your heartfelt , kind words of support and love

The house is filled with family and friends, the deep sense of family and community washes over like a varnish forever binding us together. We spent the day telling stories weeping, telling more stories and weep again.

Dad remains in his bed in a state of rest so family and friends have the opportunity to say goodbye. Myself, I choose not to view him in such a state. The last time I saw and spoke with him in his home before I left to go back to Salt Lake was perfect.

Utah's wish was to not be embalmed and laid to rest in a plain, hand made wooden coffin to expedite his return to the earth, which we will honor. He will be laid to rest in the cemetery down the road from his home in Nevada City .

The tentative date for the funeral is Thursday May 29 with a memorial service on the following Sunday . I will keep you posted when the arrangements are finalized.
Thanks
Duncan
by Dan Howard (joyofmuse [at] aol.com)
I was working the graveyard shift as a DJ in Fairbanks Alaska in 1973 for a commercial Top 40 AM station where I could basically play whaever I wanted until the program director woke up at 5 a.m.

A friend lent me the now infamous "Good, though" album and I played a few songs including "Daddy, What's A Train," "Moose Turd Pie" and "Starlight on the Rails." The control room phone rang around 3 a.m. It was an old-timer who said in a grizzled voice, "I've spent my life on the railroad and those are the best damn train songs I've ever heard. I'll come down to the station right now and give you fifty bucks for that record!"

Unfortunately, I never met the caller, and had to tell him I couldn't sell it. The following year I was working on the railroad myself, building, laying and lining track on an extra gang for the Alaska Railroad. The year after that I was working as a laborer on the Pipeline.

In 1983 I was producing folk concerts in Redding, CA and brought Utah to town. Redding, a sleepy, conservative town at the time, had never seen anything like him. Our audience listened with rapt attention and rolled in the aisles with laughter. The following year we booked him again when he was touring with Kate Wolf (what a sweet and amazing show that was!) Both times he (and Kate) stayed with my then-wife and I in Redding, so we got to know them a little. I'll always treasure those memories.

Later, I moved to the Bay Area and Utah moved to Nevada City. I would listen faithfully to "Loafer's Glory" every Sunday afternoon on KPFA (Pacifica flagship station in Berkeley). I still have dozens of cassette tapes that I recorded off the air and continue find great inspiration, hope and humor every time I listen.

I saw Utah last June as he was strolling the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival grounds with Robbie Ossman of KPFA. I greeted him and introduced myself, recalling the Redding concerts 25 years ago. He immediately said, "Oh yeah! Prisim Productions! Kate and I were coming over from Susanville." I was blown away that he remembered. We chatted for a few minutes. Another sweet and cherished memory.

So long, Uter. You will never be forgotten.


by Labor Beat, Chicago
utah_title_frame_1.jpg
Link to video of clips of Utah Phillips from Labor Beat archives

Labor Beat Remembers Utah Phillips
video.google.com/videoplay

Legendary labor singer and IWW activist Utah Phillips died peacefully in his sleep on May 23, 2008. Labor Beat celebrates his memory with clips from our video archives over 20 years. 15 minutes.

Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is affiliated with IBEW 1220. Views expressed are those of the producer, not necessarily of IBEW. For info: mail (at) laborbeat.org, http://www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330..
by Merlin Spillers (msnguys [at] cox.net)
I had the honor and pleasure of seeing Utah several times in concerts and at festivals, and was lucky enough to have a couple conversations with him. The last time I saw him there was a woman in the audience who obviously had not been familiar with him. She was laughing so hard that it was fun watching her. I always felt that he was "the great guru" to so many American folk musicians. Although I'm sure I would not have had a chance to see him again, I feel that there is such a huge gaping hold in the world that will never be filled. he was "the
by via Flashpoints
We feature an in-depth celebration of the life and times of the late muckraking troubadour and troublemaker, Bruce 'Utah' Phillips.

http://kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=26817

http://aud1.kpfa.org/data/20080613-Fri1700.mp3
Workers of the world, unite is a theme in the life of all union organizers and is greatly effective in the songs of Utah Phillips. He lives on in song and is not forgotten when the going gets tough, and the class war breaks out. "Solidarity Forever" speaks and unites more than ever on each and every picket line. The workers state remains the goal, as the tool to end all previous exploiters wars, poverty, pollution and gender discrimination,and to lead us to the liberation of all peoples from the nightmare of the present bosses society.
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