U. Utah Phillips, a Grammy-nominated folk singer, rabble-rouser and anarchist whose wild white beard recalled his years as a tramp, died of heart disease May 23 at his home in Nevada City, Calif. He was 73.
Mr. Phillips, who over four decades on the road combined storytelling with song, described the plight of the working class, the power of labor unions and the necessity of direct action. He dubbed himself the “Golden Voice of the Great Southwest,” but his words, more than his baritone voice, carried authority; he had been a soldier, railroader, state archivist, union organizer, founder of a homeless shelter and homeless himself.
His fans have posted dozens of videos of him or his songs on YouTube; in the mid-1990s, a new generation discovered him when folk musician and entrepreneur Ani DiFranco edited about 100 hours of homemade tapes of his performances and combined them with electronic hip-hop, creating an album called “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere” (1996) and releasing it on her Righteous Babe label.
In 1999, he collaborated with DiFranco on the live album “Fellow Workers,” which was nominated for a 2000 Grammy in the contemporary folk album category.
“He was a real storyteller in his performances. He was just a catalog of people’s history in the United States,” DiFranco said this week. “He was so engaging on many, many levels.”
Mr. Phillips was a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies), a radical union that called for all working people to unite.
He ran for president in 1976 as an anarchist, but he never voted — except in 2004 when President George W. Bush’s policies so enraged him, DiFranco said.
“He voted for ‘Not That Guy,'” she said.
Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Tom Waits and Arlo Guthrie have all sung his songs.
He was born Bruce Phillips in Cleveland to two labor organizers. His family moved to Utah in 1947, where Mr. Phillips learned to play the ukulele from an instruction manual, then took to the roads and rails of the West as a teenager. He adopted the name U. Utah Phillips in emulation of country vocalist T. Texas Tyler.
Broke and out of work, he joined the Army in 1956 and was sent to Korea for three years. “I wanted to learn a trade, but all they taught me was how to shoot,” he said in a Sing Out magazine interview. “What I really learned in the Army was how to be a pacifist.”
After his discharge, he began to drink heavily and ride the rails. He drew a distinction between what he did and hobos and bums, quoting the 19th Century physician to the poor, Ben Reitman.
“A hobo works and wanders, a tramp dreams and wanders, and a bum drinks and wanders,” Mr. Phillips told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2006. “That’s about right. I tramped. When I was on the freight trains, I wasn’t looking for work. I was looking to go from place to place without paying any money.”
