Phil Ochs, When He Was Just Starting

Phil Ochs is remembered as a folk singer or protest singer, although he would refer to himself as a topical singer or musical journalist.

PhilOchs

In his later years, he played such venues as Carnegie Hall and Central Park, but I met him in the mid-Sixties at a small coffee house in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

coffeehouse

As he strummed his guitar and sang about various injustices, I noticed he had a single LP on display titled All the News That’s Fit To Sing.

All_the_News_That's_Fit_to_Sing_cover

It was his first album, released in 1964, and I bought a copy as I chatted with him.  Over the years I bought several more albums at local stores.

Incidentally, one of the songs on that first album, “The Power and the Glory,” I played at a Unitarian church meeting when the subject was civil liberties.  It ends with:

Here is a land full of power and glory,
Beauty that words cannot recall.
And her power shall rest on the strength of her freedoms;
The glory shall rest on us all.
On us all.