Utah Phillips, the greatest and last of the wobbly singers has died. I'm fond of cause songs anyway, but Utah made them something special. I think it was the combination of his rough voice and commentary which brought the music and the movement to life for the time that he was on the stage. I have a copy of an excellent album he cut in Canada while singing for some striking workers (Telecom I think) some decades back.

I suppose too that I enjoyed his singing because I can sing like that - or so it seems to me while I'm passing the miles by in my car. The verse I know the best is this one:

"The long haired preachers come out every night,
to tell you what's wrong and what's right,
but if you ask them for something to eat,
They will tell you in voices so sweet...

You will eat by and by
In that glorious land in the sky,
way up high,
work and pray,
live on hay,
you'll get pie in the sky when you die (that's a lie)"

I guess he felt he just had to put in that part in parenthesis, just in case someone missed the point.

I saw Utah sing several times - once in Canada, once in Garberville - and it was clear that his wobbyness was real, not a persona for the stage. He spoke of going to old folks homes and cheap boardinghouses to find the last of the wobblies, so he could learn their stories and, I suppose, let them know that he was carrying on for them. It was for him like the modern blues players going to find the pioneers of the music - a way to connect with the tradition.

And I remember his line "Of course, when you sing like I do, you've got to be able to leave with considerable alacrity. I keep a Greyhouse bus ticket in my pocket at all times." Hearing his voice you wondered at first if he was refering to the response to his music, or his politics, but now that I can duplicate his voice for short spells, I'm sure it was his politics.

Perhaps you've heard his story about gardening? He was away from home touring during the spring planting season, and worried about how his partner was going to get the garden in. He heard Bella Abzug talk about her phone being tapped, and he got an idea. So he called home and said "For God's sake don't go digging in the back yard, that's where the guns are buried." The national guard rolled up and dug up the entire back yard, just in time for the planting.

I don't know if that story is true, but it ought to be. Another great folk musician, fighter for the rights of the oppressed and downtrodden, and good person, is gone. We will not be able to replace him.