Folk Legend Utah Phillips Dies at Seventy-Three

Folk singer Utah Phillips, the "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest," died of congestive heart failure Friday night at the age of seventy-three. Over the course of his forty-plus year career, Phillips often supported peace groups and labor unions, as evidenced by "Moose Turd Pie," his biggest hit in folk circles. Phillips collaborated with Ani DiFranco on two albums, the second of which, Fellow Workers, was nominated for the best contemporary folk album Grammy in 2000. Phillips also ran for U.S. Senate in 1968 and in 1991 recorded an album in one take about his anger toward the Gulf War called I've Got to Know. Later in his life, Phillips started a folk music radio show and even helped start a homeless shelter in Nevada City, California. Phillips is survived by his wife and three children.

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Song Stories

“Is It True”

Brenda Lee | 1964

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."

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