Utah Phillips

Known as "The golden voice of the great American Southwest," Bruce "U. Utah" Phillips refused to settle into a quiet retirement. Even after stepping away from the road following 1996 and facing heart ailments that took his life in 2008 at age 73, the Nevada City, CA-based singer and storyteller with deep political convictions stayed engaged to the fullest. In a message to family and friends near the end, he wrote, "My body is weak but my will is strong, and I keep my disposition as sunny and humorous as I’m able." He added, "The future? I don’t know. But I have songs in a folder I’ve never paid attention to, and songs inside me waiting for me to bring them out. Through all of it, up and down, it’s the song. It’s always been the song."

His political outlook stemmed from his parents, who served as union organizers during the 1930s. His mother held a position with the C.I.O. prior to its merger with the A.F.L. After his parents divorced and his mother remarried the manager of Cleveland’s Hippodrome, one of the final old vaudeville theaters, Phillips encountered theater as a child and remained shaped by that world. The influence persisted when he relocated with his mother and stepfather to Utah in 1947. Though his stepfather established Film Service International and his stepbrother later produced films for Universal Studios, Phillips channeled his creativity elsewhere, prompting his mother to wrap his lunches in road maps as he kept leaving home.

His earliest musical efforts began with a baritone ukulele learned from Ukulele Ike songbooks, yet that path shifted once he departed and took work on a road crew in Yellowstone Park. Older crew members who played guitars and sang Jimmie Rodgers and Gene Autry songs showed him how to adapt ukulele chords to guitar by adding fingers. During his service in the Korean conflict, Phillips sought comfort in music and helped assemble the Rice Paddy Ramblers. A pivotal moment in his political growth arrived when he attended a performance by Black vocalist Marian Anderson in a Korean theater, stirring memories of the outrage he had felt when Anderson was denied lodging at a Utah hotel while appearing at his stepfather’s venue.

His political development deepened upon returning to the United States. At the Joe Hill House for Transients and Migrants, Ammon Hennessey befriended him and guided him toward pacifism, while also steering his use of music as a political instrument. On the route to a demonstration at a Hiroshima peace memorial, Hennessey prompted Phillips to compose his first song, "The Enola Gay." Crafting it revealed to Phillips how a song could inspire as well as entertain. For more than 40 years he held membership in the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies); after losing his card in Korea, he restored it upon his return.

Though he performed in taverns where tips landed in his guitar case, Phillips possessed scant knowledge of folk music until folklorist and University of Pennsylvania professor Kenneth S. Goldstein, visiting Utah for a 1960 folklore conference, overheard him singing on his porch and invited him to record. The resulting album, No One Knows Me, was captured on a rented tape recorder at the local university.

Phillips maintained a balance between musical pursuits and political work. During the early '60s he took part in Fair Play for Cuba and efforts to enact open housing laws in Utah. In 1968 he campaigned for the U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom ticket and garnered 6,000 votes, yet the bid cost him his position at the Utah State Archives. He remained in Utah another year, employed by the Migrant Council and residing on a cot inside a warehouse known as "the Cosmic Airplane." Urged by friends such as folksinger Rosalie Sorrels to pursue performing, Phillips relocated to the East Coast in 1969. After a brief stay in New York’s Greenwich Village, he settled for several years in Saratoga Springs, New York, becoming a regular at Caffe Lena.

In 1991 Phillips toured alongside Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Spider John Koerner; their concert at Minneapolis’s World Theater was recorded and issued the next year as Legends of Folk. Later in the decade, The Past Didn't Go Anywhere paired his stories and stage commentary with music by Ani DiFranco, bringing his anarchistic outlook to younger listeners, while Loafer's Glory collected stories, poems, and songs backed by Woody Guthrie-influenced guitarist Mark Ross and affirmed to longtime fans that his voice still mattered. Two earlier recordings, El Capitan and All Used Up, appeared together as The Telling Takes Me Home, and his compositions received further tribute when bluegrass duo Jody Stecher & Kate Brislin released Heart Songs: The Old Time Country Songs of Utah Phillips, nominated for the 1997 Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. Phillips and Ross first collaborated in the late '80s after focal dystonia in his right hand and Dupuytren's contracture in his left made fingerpicking and chording difficult. DiFranco initiated their partnership through a letter, drawing stories from more than 100 hours of his live shows.

Though Phillips later reduced performances to one per month before stopping altogether, he continued expressing his music and politics through other channels. Having run for president every year since 1969, he hosted the weekly hour-long Loafer's Glory: The Hobo Jungle of the Mind on Berkeley’s KPSA, carried by the Pacifica network from 1997 to 2001 and offered free to community stations. The 1999 release The Moscow Hold presented additional stories and poems.

Until the close, Utah Phillips understood what mattered most. In his final letter he reflected, "I spent a long time finding my way -- couches, floors, big towns, small towns, marginal pay (folk wages). But I found that people seemed to like what I was doing. The folk music family took me in, carried me along, and taught me the value of song far beyond making a living. It taught me that I don’t need wealth, I don’t need power, and I don’t need fame. What I need is friends, and that’s what I found -- everywhere -- and not just among those on the stage, but among those in front of the stage as well."