http://www.revleft.com/graphics/cdco...hPhillips3.jpgBy David Rovics - May 25th, 2008
I wouldn't want to elevate anybody to inappropriately high heights, but for me, Utah Phillips was a legend.
Ifirst became familiar with the Utah Phillips phenomenon in the late80's, when I was in my early twenties, working part-time as a prep cookat Morningtown in Seattle. I had recently read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States,and had been particularly enthralled by the early 20th Century section,the stories of the Industrial Workers of the World. So it was withgreat interest that I first discovered a greasy cassette there in thekitchen by the stereo, Utah Phillips Sings the Songs and Tells the Stories of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Asa young radical, I had heard lots about the 1960's. There were (andare) plenty of veterans of the struggles of the 60's alive and welltoday. But the wildly tumultuous era of the first two decades of the20th century is now (and pretty well was then) a thing entirely ofhistory, with no one living anymore to tell the stories. And while longafter the 60's there will be millions of hours of audio and videorecorded for posterity, of the massive turn-of-the-century movement ofthe industrial working class there will be virtually none of that.
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