Utah Phillips.

January 9, 2009 10:10 PM

Utah Phillips: Songwriter, singer, storyteller (May 15, 1935 – May 23, 2008). "Moose Turd Pie". "Get rid of the bum on the plush" and "Hallelujah, I'm a bum". Emmylou Harris sings "Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia". Tom Waits sings "Goodnight-Loving Trail" A tribute to Judi Bari, plus "World Turned Upside Down". Bob Neuwirth sings "Rock Salt and Nails". Amy Goodman interviews Utah Phillips: War and Non-Violence.

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing found Utah Phillips' Stories, Songs, and Poems (Part 1) transcribed by James Han.

posted by shetterly (5 comments total)

Enough here to feed us all for a thousand years!
posted by Abiezer at 11:31 PM on January 9, 2009

My mum used to sing that 'Hallelujah, I'm a bum' song when I was a kid. Presumably, she learned it from the Al Jolson film (written by Ben Hecht). The idea that you could have a huge film like that in which the title song was a recruiting anthem for the Wobblies always struck me as somewhat peculiar.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:37 AM on January 10, 2009

Saw this recently:

I respect kids. I love especially little kids. Little kids are assholes. But they're their own assholes, see, it's when they, when you grow up and become somebody else's asshole we're all in trouble, you know, like bankers or B-52 pilots and such.-Utah Philips
posted by Enron Hubbard at 6:23 AM on January 10, 2009

PeterMcDermott, you've inspired an idea for a future MeFi post: songs that really, really, really should be in the public domain given their subject.
posted by shetterly at 7:59 AM on January 10, 2009

Hey this is great fun, I've been trying to tell some of these stories to people forever, it's nice to be able to cut and paste instead of sending them an MP3 file.

We were in the Grand Union, [a] supermarket, getting some food, over by Greenwich or Cambridge, one or the other, with old Dorothea Brownell, Morrigan's godmother - now this is education! A little kid was fussing at the checkout counter, stuck in one of those baskets - it's all the lights in those places, make kids crazy, we all know that, don't we? Well, and the kid was fussy, and the parents were ragging on the kid, and... I get them to laugh, and the parents laugh, and the checkout person laughs.

Morrigan starts punching me in the side, and said - yelling at me! - she said, "Why can't you be normal?"

And old Miss Brownell rapped Morrigan on her shin - rudely - with her cane, and said: "He is normal - what you meant to say is 'average.'"

posted by jessamyn at 8:21 AM on January 10, 2009