Utah Phillips
Musician · 1935–2008 · Cleveland, Ohio
Best known for
Songwriter
Bruce “Utah” Phillips was a labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, and poet whose songbook of rambling, working, and union material has been recorded by Emmylou Harris, Ian Tyson, Tom Waits, and Ani DiFranco, among many others. A self-identified anarchist shaped by the IWW tradition and a postwar Army tour in Korea, he toured solo for half a century from his adopted home in the Sierra foothills.
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- Born Bruce Duncan Phillips on May 15, 1935, in Cleveland, Ohio, to a labor-organizer father and politically radical mother.
- Moved with his family to Salt Lake City, Utah in the late 1940s, where he picked up the ukulele — and, later, the stage name “Utah.”
- Served three years in the U.S. Army in the 1950s; what he saw in post-war Korea shaped his lifelong politics.
- Met folk singer Rosalie Sorrels in the early 1950s; her covers carried his early songs into the folk-revival circuit.
- Wrote “Goodnight-Loving Trail,” later recorded by Ian Tyson and Tom Waits, and co-wrote “Green Rolling Hills” with Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, recorded as an album cut by Emmylou Harris.
- Settled in Nevada City, California, where he helped start Hospitality House and the local Peace and Justice Center; he lived there for 21 years.
- Collaborated with Ani DiFranco on two albums in the late 1990s and earned a Grammy nomination for that work.
- Died of complications from heart disease on May 23, 2008, in Nevada City, at age 73.