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

“Push It”

Salt-N-Pepa | 1987

Originating as a B side to their cover of the Stax classic “Tramp,” Cheryl “Salt” James, Sandi “Pepa” Denton and Dee Dee “DJ Spinderella” Roper came up with the goods on this career-making, Grammy-nominated platinum single about working it on the dancefloor. “Push It” has been sampled and spliced to death since it debuted in 1987, yet the original track is as fresh and fly as when SNP — among the few original women of hip-hop — debuted it. “Most men will never believe ‘Push It’ was never about sex,” said James. “And that’s why the record went to Number One,” said Denton. “Everybody thought it was about sex.”

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