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Utah Phillips
Utah Phillips
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"The golden voice of the great American Southwest", Bruce "U. Utah" Phillips is not one to take retirement sitting down. "Officially" retired from touring since 1996, the politically-conscious, Nevada City, California-based, singer and storyteller has maintained a constant flow of new recordings and reissues. An album of his stories and between-song patter set to music by Ani DiFranco, The Past Didn't Go Anywhere, introduced his anarchistic persona to a young audience, while Loafer's Glory, a collection of stories, poems and songs set to the accompaniment of Woody Guthrie-influenced guitarist Mark Ross, showed his long-time audience that he still had something of importance to say. In addition to two of his earlier albums -- El Capitan and All Used Up -- being released as The Telling Takes Me Home, Phillips' songs were honored with an album-length celebration of his songs by bluegrass duo, Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin, Heart Songs: The Old Time Country Songs of Utah Phillips, that receive a Grammy nomination as "best traditional folk album of 1997".

Phillips and Ross initially worked together in the late-1980s when problems with Phillips contracted focal distonia in his right hand which prevented him from fingerpicking and dupytren in his left hand which made it difficult for him to make a chord. His collaboration with DiFranco was instigated by a letter that he received from the hard-edged acoustic performer. The stories that DiFranco set to music were culled from over a hundred hours of his live performances. Phillips' political awareness was inherited from his parents who were union organizers in the 1930s. His mother worked for the C.I.O. before it merged with the A.F.L.. As a youngster, Phillips was influenced by his exposure to the theater after his parents were divorced and his mother was re-married to the manager of the Hippodrome in Cleveland, one of the last of the old vaudeville houses. His involvement with the theater continued after moving with his mother and step-father to Utah in 1947. Although his step-father founded Film Service International and his step-brother went on to become a producer for Universal Studios, Phillips found his creativity pulled in another direction, running away from so much that his mother started wrapping his lunch in a road map.

After cutting his early musical teeth on a baritone ukelele on which he learned to play from Ukelele Ike songbooks, Phillips' musical direction was altered after he left home and traveled to Yellowstone Park to work on a road crew. The older work rs on the crew, who played guitars and sang old Jimmie Rodgers and Gene Autry songs, taught Phillips how to turn ukelele chords into guitar chords by adding a couple of fingers.

As a soldier during the Korean conflict, Phillips continued to find refuge in music and helped to form a band, the Rice Paddy Ramblers. A turning point in his growing political awareness came when he attended a concert in a Korean theater by black vocalist Marion Anderson. The experience caused Phillips to recall the anger that he felt when Anderson had come to Utah to perform at his step-father's theater and she had ben refused entry into the town's hotel.

Phillips' political awakening continued after he returned to the United States. Befriended by Ammon Hennessey at the Joe Hill House for Transients and Migrants, he was convinced to become a pacifist. Phillips' use of music as a political weapon was strongly influenced by Hennessey. On the way to a demonstration at a Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Phillips was encouraged to write his first song, "The Enola Gay." Writing the song stirred a new understanding of the power of music as Phillips realized that a song, besides being entertaining, could be inspirational. Phillips has been a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World (The Wobblies) for more than forty years. Although he misplaced his membership card in Korea, he had it reinstated after returning to the United States.

Although he sang in taverns where money would be thrown into his guitar case, Phillips had little understanding of folk music. The situation changed when Phillips was approached by folklorist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Kenneth S. Goldstein, who had traveled to Utah to attend a folklore conference in 1960. Overheard by Goldstein, as he sat on his front porch singing, Phillips was invited to record his first album, No One Knows Me, on a rented tape recorder at the local university.

Phillips continued to balance his love of music with his political involvement. In the early-1960s, he was involved with Fair Play for Cuba and the struggle for open housing laws in Utah. In 1968, he was nominated and campaigned for the U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom ticket. Although he received 6,000 votes, the experience led to Phillips being dismissed from his job with the Utah State Archives.

Following the election, Phillips remained in Utah for a year, working for the Migrant Council and living on a cot in the back of a big warehouse called "The Cosmic Airplane". Encouraged by friends, including folksinger Rosalie Sorrels, to try his hand at performing, Phillips moved to the East Coast in 1969. Temporarily stopping in New York's Greenwich Village, Phillips settled, for several years, in Sarasota Springs, New York, where he became a regular performer at Cafe Lena.

In 1991, Phillips toured with Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Spider John Koerner. Their performance at the World Theater in Minneapolis was taped and released as Legends Of Folk the following year.

Although he's slowed down his touring to one performance a month, Phillips, has found other mediums in which to express his music and political concerns. Phillips, who has run for president in every election since 1969, hosts a weekly, one-hour, radio show, Loafer's Glory: The Hobo Jungle of the Mind, broadcast by KPSA in Berkeley, California over the Pacifica network. In addition to being aired on the five stations owned by Pacifica, the show is available to any community radio station at no charge. 1999's The Moscow Hold featured more of his stories and poems. ~ Craig Harris, All Music GuideMore

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