April 26, 1981
Jeannie Kever
Times staff writer
Folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs has even more tenuous ties – once again via Uncle Sam – to the city listed as his birthplace.Ochs, who became one of the most popular folk singers and protest song writers of the 1960s, was born in El Paso in 1940 while his father was stationed with the Army at Columbus, N.M.
He was born in El Paso because his mother didn’t consider any hospitals in New Mexico to be acceptable, according to a biography by Marc Elliot.
The family moved to San Antonio, and then to the Midwest, soon after.
By the mid-1960s, Ochs had three successful albums and was considered, behind Bob Dylan, the most promising and authentic American folk singer of this time.
Then years later, his voice lost in a strange accident in Africa, his marriage failed, his political interest killed with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 and his writing stalled, Ochs hanged himself.
Comments