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I just found the email below in my inbox, and I decided it was right to share it with our community. I didn't know Utah well, but I met him and saw him perform on several occasions. It would be impossible to call any man more down to earth than Utah Phillips was. Years ago I called him up in Washington State where he lived to see if he might play at a political coffee house run by a collective I was part of in San Francisco. It didn't matter that Utah didn't really know who I was; we had a nice chat as he explained to me what was going on in his life at the moment and why he couldn't give me a firm committment just then.
Utah was a key living link between the anarchist internationalists and the Wobblies from an American age long ago, connected both with them and the people who capitalism forgot during the Great Depression, the hobos who rode the rails. He carried that torch long enough for it to be passed to younger generations, and I am comforted to know that his music will always be with us. Sorry for the choppy nature of the text, but this is how the email came through to me:
UTAH PHILLIPS: May 15, 1935 – May 24, 2008
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
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. . .
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