Phillips said he never put it all together like this. From his childhood to Korea, his work with transients and migrants, his discovery of anarchism, pacifism and how to use music as a weapon, this is a moving, honest account of an extraordinary life.
Utah Phillips talks about his life: The Life and Times of Utah Phillips - and how I became an activist.
"The golden voice of the great American Southwest", Bruce "U. Utah" Phillips has "officially" retired from touring since 1996. He came to the Unitarian Fellowship Hall in Berkeley last summer to talk about his life and how he became an activist.
Phillips grew up in a political home; his parents were union organizers in the 1930s. When he left home to join a road crew in Yellowstone Park the older workers, who played guitars, taught Phillips how to turn his ukulele chords into guitar chords by adding a couple of fingers.
As a soldier during the war on Korea, Phillips continued to find refuge in music and helped to form a band. After he returned to the United States he befriended Ammon Hennessey at the Joe Hill House for Transients and Migrants. Hennessey convinced him to become a pacifist and to use music as a political weapon.
Early on Phillips had little understanding of folk music. The situation changed when he was approached by folklorist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Kenneth S. Goldstein, who invited him to record his first album, No One Knows Me, on a rented tape recorder at the local university.
In the early-1960s, Phillips 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. Phillips settled, for several years, in Sarasota Springs, New York, where he became a regular performer at Cafe Lena.
Phillips now lives in Nevada City, California where he hosted a weekly, one-hour, radio show, Loafer's Glory: The Hobo Jungle of the Mind.
Phillips is active, comes to join picket lines and attend political trials, and hopes to regain the use of his hand so he can play the guitar again.
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