Strange Fruit

For other uses, see Strange Fruit (disambiguation).

"Strange Fruit"
File:Strange-Fuit.jpg
Single by Billie Holiday
A-side	Fine and Mellow
Released	1939
Format	78 rpm
Recorded	April 20, 1939
Genre	Blues, jazz
Label	Commodore
Writer(s)	Abel Meeropol
Billie Holiday singles chronology
I'm Gonna Lock My Heart (1938) "Strange Fruit" (1939) "God Bless the Child" (1942) Music sample "Strange Fruit" noicon

"Strange Fruit" is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. Written by teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem and published in 1937, it protested American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had reached a peak in the South at the turn of the century, but continued there and in other regions of the United States. Meeropol set it to music and, with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan, performed it as a protest song in New York venues in the late 1930s, including Madison Square Garden.

The song continues to be covered by numerous artists, and has inspired novels, other poems, and other creative works. In 1978, Holiday's version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Poem and song

File:ThomasShippAbramSmith.jpg

Meeropol cited this photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930, as inspiring his poem.

"Strange Fruit" originated as a poem written by American writer, teacher and songwriter Abel Meeropol under his pseudonym Lewis Allan, as a protest against lynchings. In the poem, Meeropol expressed his horror at lynchings, inspired by Lawrence Beitler's photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. He published the poem under the title "Bitter Fruit" in 1937 in The New York Teacher, a union magazine. Though Meeropol had asked others (notably Earl Robinson) to set his poems to music, he set "Strange Fruit" to music himself. His protest song gained a certain success in and around New York. Meeropol, his wife, and black vocalist Laura Duncan performed it at Madison Square Garden.

The lyrics are under copyright but have been republished in full in an academic journal, with permission.

Billie Holiday's performances and recordings

Barney Josephson, the founder of Cafe Society in Greenwich Village, New York's first integrated nightclub, heard the song and introduced it to Billie Holiday. Other reports say that Robert Gordon, who was directing Billie Holiday's show at Cafe Society, heard the song at Madison Square Garden and introduced it to her. Holiday first performed the song at Cafe Society in 1939. She said that singing it made her fearful of retaliation but, because its imagery reminded her of her father, she continued to sing the piece, making it a regular part of her live performances. Because of the power of the song, Josephson drew up some rules: Holiday would close with it; the waiters would stop all service in advance; the room would be in darkness except for a spotlight on Holiday's face; and there would be no encore. During the musical introduction, Holiday stood with her eyes closed, as if she were evoking a prayer.

Holiday approached her recording label, Columbia, about the song, but the company feared reaction by record retailers in the South, as well as negative reaction from affiliates of its co-owned radio network, CBS. When Holiday's producer John Hammond also refused to record it, she turned to her friend Milt Gabler, whose Commodore label produced alternative jazz. Holiday sang "Strange Fruit" for him a cappella, and moved him to tears. Columbia gave Holiday a one-session release from her contract so she could record it; Frankie Newton's eight-piece Cafe Society Band was used for the session. Because Gabler worried the song was too short, he asked pianist Sonny White to improvise an introduction. On the recording, Holiday starts singing after 70 seconds. Gabler worked out a special arrangement with Vocalion Records to record and distribute the song.

Holiday recorded two major sessions of the song at Commodore, one in 1939 and one in 1944. The song was highly regarded; the 1939 record sold a million copies, in time becoming Holiday's biggest-selling record.

In her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, Holiday suggested that she, together with Meeropol, her accompanist Sonny White, and arranger Danny Mendelsohn, set the poem to music. The writers David Margolick and Hilton Als dismissed that claim in their work Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, writing that hers was "an account that may set a record for most misinformation per column inch". When challenged, Holiday—whose autobiography had been ghostwritten by William Dufty —claimed, "I ain't never read that book."

Influence

In October 1939, Samuel Grafton of The New York Post described "Strange Fruit": "If the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise."

Honors

• 1999, Time magazine called it the song of the century.
• 2002, the Library of Congress honored the song as one of 50 recordings chosen that year to add to the National Recording Registry.
• Serbian rock musician, journalist and writer Dejan Cukić wrote about "Strange Fruit" as among 45 songs that changed the history of popular music in his book 45 obrtaja: Priče o pesmama (2007).
• In 2010, the New Statesman listed it as one of the “Top 20 Political Songs”.
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution listed the song as Number One on "100 Songs of the South".

In popular culture

Comics

• Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette and John Totleben's comic book Swamp Thing #42 (1985) features a story titled "Strange Fruit" for a horror story about southern racism.

Film

• Bob Dylan cited "Strange Fruit" as an influence in the documentary No Direction Home (2005)

Literature

• Lillian Smith's novel Strange Fruit (1944) was said to have been inspired by Holiday's version of the song.

Music

• Rapper Danny! recorded "Strange Fruit", a song about his encounter with a racist hotel manager, who prevented him and his friends from checking into a reserved room after discovering they were black.
• Kanye West sampled this piece in his song "Blood on the Leaves".
• British DJ John Peel named his record label Strange Fruit after the song

Opera

• The opera Strange Fruit (2007) was adapted from Lillian Smith's 1944 novel. A commissioned work, it premiered on June 15, 2007, at the Long Leaf Opera Festival in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, starring Charles Stanton, baritone, and Erina Newkirk, soprano. Chandler Carter was the composer and Joan Ross Sorkin was the librettist.

Television

• American Dad! Season 9, Episode 10 ("Blood Crieth Unto Heaven") uses a clip in the opening act.
• Katey Sagal with The Forest Rangers and Blake Mills's cover was used in the Sons of Anarchy episode, "Fruit for the Crows" (2011), in which a club member tries to hang himself.
• Season 1 Episode 2 of The Man in the High Castle depicts a vinyl record playing the song.
• Billie Holiday's battle with drugs and her first time singing "Strange Fruit" are explored in Season 7, Episode 149 of Touched by an Angel ("God Bless The Child").

Cuisine

• The Cambridge, Massachusetts restaurant The Friendly Toast included a drink called Strange Fruit, after Smith's novel, on a menu of cocktails named after banned books. In 2015 this generated controversy, as a patron took the name as a reference to the song and found it inappropriate. The drink was later removed from the menu.

Covers

• The song is included on the album Carmen McRae Sings Lover Man and Other Billie Holiday Classics (1962)
• Lou Rawls on his albums Black and Blue (1963) and Tobacco Road (1964).
• Nina Simone's album Pastel Blues (1965) included her version of the song.
• Diana Ross covers this song on both the soundtrack of her film Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and on her live album Stolen Moments (1992).
• Reggae group UB40 covered the song on their 1980 album Signing Off.
• Robert Wyatt sings it on his compilation album Nothing Can Stop Us (1982).
• The Gun Club on the live bonus edition of their Death Party EP (1983).
• Sting and Gil Evans performed the song together; it is included on the live album Last Session (1987).
• Siouxsie and the Banshees performed a cover of "Strange Fruit" for their album Through the Looking Glass (1987).
• Stan Campbell (lead vocalist on the classic "Free Nelson Mandela") included it on his album "Stan Campbell" (1987).
• Tori Amos recorded it as a B-side to her 1994 single "Cornflake Girl".
• Bassist Marcus Miller performed the song live on his album Live & More. He also included a cover of the song for his 1995 studio album Tales
• Cassandra Wilson covered it on her album New Moon Daughter (1995).
• British musician John Martyn included it on his album The Church with One Bell (1998).

2000 and afterward

• Elkie Brooks covers this song on her 2001 album Shangri-La
• Karan Casey covered it on her album The Winds Begin To Sing (2001).
• Diane Izzo and John Rice with the Pine Valley Cosmonauts included a version on The Executioner's Last Songs, Vols II & III, 2003
• The Twilight Singers included it in their 2004 covers album She Loves You.
• In 2007, Mojo magazine selected Siouxsie and the Banshees's version from their Through the Looking Glass album, for a CD called Music Is Love: 15 Tracks That Changed The World Recovered By....
• Cocteau Twins sang it as a BBC session recording.
• Folk Punk ensemble This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb covers the song in their 2008 album convertible.
• Jeff Buckley sang a live version on his album Live at Sin-é (Legacy edition) (2003).
• Karate covers this song in their EP In the Fishtank 12 (2005).
• Snowman covered the song for Triple J's Like a Version segment. The song appeared on the fourth Like a Version compilation CD (2008).
• Flowers Forever (Derek Pressnall of Tilly & the Wall) covers the song on the band's self-titled debut (2008).
• A karaoke version of "Strange Fruit" appears on Karaoke Union Songs (2007). The vocal version on this album is by Jackie Richardson.
• Dee Dee Bridgewater performed a cover of "Strange Fruit" for her album Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie with Love from Dee Dee Bridgewater (2009).
• AaRON covered the song on their album Artificial Animals Riding On Neverland in 2007.
• René Marie, jazz artist, combined the song with "Dixie" on her 2004 album Vertigo.
• Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa covered the song on their album Seesaw (2013). Also on Live in Amsterdam (2014).
• Nona Hendryx covers the song on her album Mutatis Mutandis (2012).
• India.Arie covers the song on the deluxe edition of her album Songversation (2013).
• Kanye West uses a sample of Nina Simone's version of the song in his song "Blood on the Leaves" on his Yeezus album (2013).
• Claire Johnston, from the South African group Mango Groove, sang a version on her album Africa Blue (2006).
• Annie Lennox covers the song on her 2014 album Nostalgia.
• Katey Sagal covers the song on the TV show Sons of Anarchy and was released on the soundtrack album Songs of Anarchy: Music from Sons of Anarchy Seasons 1–4 (2011)
• Tara Mackey covers the song as a single and released it on YouTube, citing " The Earth Has Music For Those Who Listen." (2014)

External links

• "Strange Fruit", Independent Lens, PBS
• Strange Fruit, Newsreel documentary
• "Strange Fruit", Shmoop, analysis of lyrics, historical and literary allusions - student & teaching guide
• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics
• "Strange Fruit" at MusicBrainz (information & list of recordings)
• BBC Radio 4 - Soul Music, Series 17, Strange Fruit
• "Strange Fruit: A protest song with enduring relevance"