From the Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, May 25, 2008, p. B6:
1935-2008: Bruce 'Utah' Phillips
Folk artist made name singing of Utah history
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. 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.
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.
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.
Born May 15, 1935, in Cleveland to labor organizer parents, Bruce Phillips and his family came to Utah in 1947.
Bruce Phillips served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. Phillips returned to the states and was drinking and "bumming" on freight trains when he ended up in a Salt Lake City homeless shelter. He went on to work as an archivist for the state, where he learned much of Utah's history.
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.
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.hospitalityhouse shelter.org.
ncarlisle@sltrib.com
lwhitehurst@sltrib.com
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The official 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 Café 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
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I tell you that I cannot wrap my mind around a world minus Utah. It's like when Ammon Hennassy died thirty some years back. Utah was a true and trembling iron tramp which meant he traveled by box car and lived by the rules of being a tramp.
He did his share and more, he brought us dry humor from a dry land. And he stood like a Black Jack Pine against the injustices of the cruel men who rule us.
A man of peace organizing protests for our right to live and be. He was our union The Industrial Workers of the World's best because he lived the ideal of "One Big Union." It's a day to day thing. He will be remembered like Dark Lucy Parsons or Emma Goldman or Carlo Tresca.
He was a Unitarian without being wishywashy. He would be heard and his message was the message of hope and understanding. There was no greater feminist he knew and promoted balance.
There's a wonderful interview freshly published on Democracy Now of him speaking for forty mins. I'm still to broken up to write about him. Just that the West Bound he just caught will be singing "Rail Roading the Great Divide" When it pulls into Union Depot.
Cordley Coit Ringleader on the Educational CyberPlayGround-------------------
When I first came to Cambridge in the mid-'70s, Utah was a regular in a
concert series I produced with Living Folk Concerts. [By the way, his obit made
the Boston Globe on Saturday.] He was always a joy to work with, had us all
reciting with him his alternative Pledge of Allegiance, and his stories and
songs were unlike anything else we'd heard in this area--then or now. He was the
real deal!
In the late '90s, he played at the Newport Folk Festival and I was his
roadie. That was a trip indeed! He did an NPR interview in Boston where, when
asked about his heart health, pressed the 'clicker' in his shirt pocket [remember
those from elementary school substitute teachers using them to get class
attention?] and said, 'It sounds pretty good to me, don't you think?' This was
on national radio! He also wore a 'US Witness Protection Program' shirt all
weekend in Newport!
Last year he came East for the last time and played a Legacy Series gig at
Club Passim (successor to Club 47) in Cambridge, in which he was interviewed
on-stage and continued to reminisce all through the concert. We have that
interview in the Passim Archives and hope to get it on the new website soon. Stay
tuned.
We won't see the likes of Utah again any time soon.
Millie Rahn
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Excellent program about
Utah Phillips and his life's
work and vision, including an interview recorded 4
years ago, aired today on the program Democracy Now:
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Glad to see all the reactions and reminiscences. I'll throw in my 2¢...
I first met Bruce Phillips in 1964, at the Galax Fiddlers' Convention (VA).
At that time, he was Assistant State Archivist in Utah, and had made a trip
back east with some of the Utah Valley Boys. I hitched a ride to Nashville
with them on their way westward.
When Phillips moved to the East around 1969, and I was a folklore student at
Penn, Kenny Goldstein reintroduced me to him. Kenny had recorded Phillips
and Rosalie Sorrels for the Prestige label years back in Salt Lake City. We
struck up a musical friendship, and I wound up going on the road with him in
1970-71 as his harmonica accompanist. What a gas to criss-cross the country
with him several times, and get to know what it meant to be a touring musician!
Eventually I wrote my PhD dissertation at Penn based on Phillips'
performances: "The Effect of Performer-Audience Interaction on Performance
Strategies: 'Moose-Turd Pie' in Context" (1982).
Bruce had an enormous influence on my life, and I will miss him dearly.
Saul Broudy
Philadelphia, PA USA
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