[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5YoLjYD8QE]U. Utah Phillips has died. My friend Frances Friedman had told me about Phillips when he came to meetings of the San Francisco Folk Club back in the Sixties. And then I got a chance to see him perform at Prospect House, a neighborhood center in the Laurel-Clayton neighborhood of Worcester in about 1973 or so. There weren't thirty people there that afternoon, and he sang his heart out. He convinced me to get my Wobblie card, and I became a member of the IWW. (It might be time for me to re-up.) He was as close to Woody Guthrie as we got in my lifetime--a vagabonding troubadour and labor organizer. He was a treasure that not very many people knew about. Mike in Worcester and Joe in Sunrise wrote me today about Utah, Joe reminding me how he toured a lot with Rosalie Sorrels. Here's a look at Utah trough the years.

John Dufresne