US folk singer, storyteller and poet Bruce Phillips, more commonly known as U. Utah Phillips, has died at the age of 73 from heart-failure. He was at his home in Nevada City, California, when he passed away, according to family spokesman Jordan Fisher Smith, and had been suffering from chronic heart disease since 2004. Smith added that those health problems had, in the last few years, cut short the extensive touring schedules that characterised his career, though he had kept in touch with fans via the internet with help from his sun Duncan.
The singer, known as the 'golden voice of the great southwest', was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to politically active parents. He served in the US Army in the fifties, and spent time in Korea, an experience which it's said influenced his political thinking. A champion for the rights of working people, he once ran for senate as a member of the Peace And Freedom Party. A lifelong rail fan, he recorded several albums with a railroad theme, his most famous track being one called 'Moose Turd Pie' – a single from his first album which tells a tall tale of serving animal excrement to railway workers. It was this song that gained a degree of airplay on US radio in the early seventies, and helped bring the singer to popular attention, his career gaining momentum due to his touring, reaching a peak in 2000 with a Grammy nod.
Jordan Fisher Smith told the AP: "He was a man who was amazingly funny. And what I saw in the last two years of his life was a human being even more beautiful than he was in performance".
Phillips is survived by his wife Joanna Robinson, three children and two stepchildren.