The situation changed when Phillips was approached by folklorist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Kenneth S.
While he sang in taverns where money would be thrown into his guitar case, Phillips had little understanding of folk music. On the way to a demonstration at a Hiroshima peace memorial, Phillips was encouraged to write his first song, "The Enola Gay." Writing the song stirred a new understanding of the power of music as Phillips realized that a song, besides being entertaining, could be inspirational. Phillips' use of music as a political weapon was strongly influenced by Hennessey. Befriended by Ammon Hennessey at the Joe Hill House for Transients and Migrants, he was convinced to become a pacifist. Phillips' political awakening continued after he returned to the United States. The experience caused Phillips to recall the anger that he felt when Anderson had come to Utah to perform at his stepfather's theater and she had been refused entry into the town's hotel. A turning point in his growing political awareness came when he attended a concert in a Korean theater by black vocalist Marian Anderson.
ENOLA GAY SONG UTAH PHILLIPS HOW TO
The older workers on the crew, who played guitars and sang old Jimmie Rodgers and Gene Autry songs, taught Phillips how to turn ukulele chords into guitar chords by adding a couple of fingers.Īs a soldier during the Korean conflict, Phillips continued to find refuge in music and helped to form a band, the Rice Paddy Ramblers.
Although his stepfather founded Film Service International and his stepbrother went on to become a producer for Universal Studios, Phillips found his creativity pulled in another direction, running away from so much that his mother started wrapping his lunch in a road map.Īfter cutting his early musical teeth on a baritone ukulele on which he learned to play from Ukulele Ike songbooks, Phillips' musical direction was altered after he left home and traveled to Yellowstone Park to work on a road crew. His involvement with the theater continued after moving with his mother and stepfather to Utah in 1947. As a youngster, Phillips was influenced by his exposure to the theater after his parents were divorced and his mother was remarried to the manager of the Hippodrome in Cleveland, one of the last of the old vaudeville houses. Utah” Phillips' political awareness was inherited from his parents who were union organizers in the 1930s.