Utah Phillips, folk singer, peace and labor union activist and storyteller, whose best known song was "Moose Turd Pie," has hopped a freight for the great beyond.

Utah died after a long battle with heart disease in Nevada City, Calif., at 73 after nearly 40 years of touring.

After military service in the 1950s, Utah returned to Salt Lake City and helped the Catholic Worker Movement establish a mission house named after the activist and convicted bloodthirsty murder Joe Hill. (Hill was executed at the old prison at Sugarhouse.) Phillips worked at the Joe Hill House until he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1968 on the Peace and Freedom Party against Republican Wallace Bennett.

Seeing that we don't have a Utah Phillips Federal Building downtown, I don't have to tell you how that election worked out.