Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Biography of a Song
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Learn the story behind the song performed by Andra Day in “United States vs. Billie Holiday” now on Hulu
Recorded by jazz legend Billie Holiday in 1939, “Strange Fruit” is considered the first significant song of the Civil Rights movement and the first direct assault against racial lynchings in the South. First sung in New York’s Café Society, these revolutionary lyrics have taken up a life of their own, as David Margolick discusses in his revealing account of the song and the struggle it came to personify.
Voted the “Song of the Century”” by Time, “Strange Fruit” is a searing evocation of lynching. And when Billie Holiday sang it, she held audiences in rapt attention, moving some to tears, others to anger, and all to a heightened awareness of the racist violence that was still, nearly a century after the Civil War, taking the lives of African Americans. Now, David Margolick’s account cuts away the myths that have grown up around both Holiday and her most famous song, allowing readers to discover the true origins of “Strange Fruit”” and the circuitous paths it took to the center of a nation’s conscience.
Margolick establishes the political and cultural context that surrounded “Strange Fruit” in 1939—a year in which there were three recorded lynchings and suspicion of many others, and which saw the publication of Gone with the Wind—and traces the song’s journey through the red-baiting 50s and the incipient Civil Rights movement of the 60s, right up to the reverence it still inspires today. Along the way, Margolick includes commentary and reaction to the song from black and white audiences of different eras, and writers and musicians as varied as Lena Horne, Paul Robeson, Pauline Kael, Charles Mingus, Cassandra Wilson, Maya Angelou, among others.
Exploring the intricate nexus between jazz, race, and politics, Strange Fruit opens a window onto an extraordinary song, the woman who sang it, and the role it played in our culture’s evolving consciousness of racism.
Publisher : Ecco
Publication date : January 23, 2001
Language : English
Print length : 168 pages
ISBN-10 : 0060959568
ISBN-13 : 978-0060959562
Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
Dimensions : 7.98 x 5.42 x 0.43 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #304,395 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #497 in Music History & Criticism (Books) #878 in Black & African American Biographies #921 in African American Demographic Studies (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 100 ratings var dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction; P.when(‘A’, ‘ready’).execute(function(A) { if (dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction !== true) { dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction = true; A.declarative( ‘acrLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault”: true }, function (event) { if (window.ue) { ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } } ); } }); P.when(‘A’, ‘cf’).execute(function(A) { A.declarative(‘acrStarsLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault” : true }, function(event){ if(window.ue) { ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } }); });
10 reviews for Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Biography of a Song
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Original price was: $18.99.$11.27Current price is: $11.27.
Amazon Customer –
Social conscience
Strange Fruit is an excellent read of history through art and the dark recesses of humanity!
The Dude –
Truth is stranger than fiction!!
A fascinating story about one of the most fascinating and important songs ever written.”Strange Fruit”, without being tiresome or pedantic in any way, insidiously and irresistibly gave a major boost to the nascent Civil Rights Movement through the seductive medium of song.People who would never have listened to any graphic recounting of the truly ghastly horrors of America’s history of racial atrocities, were beguiled by this seemingly strange and innocent little ditty.Made famous by a very reluctant blues legend, Billie Holiday in 1939; “Strange Fruit” had an even stranger origin.The book itself is fascinating, yet short; bursting with a creation story that surely suggests the hand of a much higher inspiration than ever inspired a blues song, ever.After you read this fascinating little primer, you will never ever listen to this song the same way!!!Definitely a must-have book for serious collectors of cultural and socially significant esoterica.
Ken Blakely –
Good book. Made an impression on me
Good book. Made an impression on me, which is saying something.
E. Arreola –
great reading
I found myself enjoying this book a lot more than I thought I would. I recommended it to a few of my friends.
Eddie Hutchinson –
“There was a certain willful purpose when she sang that tune.” (p.102)
Abel Meeropol, white Jewish schoolteacher in New York City, after being so moved by an image of a lynching (speculated that the photo is the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion Indiana) wrote a poem about it. After being set to music, Meeropol’s poem became the song ultimately known as Strange Fruit. The song was played for jazz singer, Billie Holiday, and she sung it for the first time in front of an audience in 1939. Billie said she was nervous at first and “…was scared people would hate it.”But from that point on, Strange Fruit and Billie Holiday became intertwined in jazz history. Sure, others sang it, others certainly tried, but no one could sing it like Billie Holiday:”When Billie sings it, you feel as if you’re at the foot of the tree.” p.78″Not only did you see the `fruit’ evoked in all its graphic horror, but you saw in Billie Holiday the wife or sister or mother of one of the victims beneath the tree, almost prostrate with sorrow and fury…” p.76-77″…and with every defeat she suffered, with every additional increment of abuse she endured or inflicted upon herself, the more personal the song came to seem. The confidence with which she’d first sung it gave way to pure pathos.” p.89-90According to Meeropol, who heard her sing the song, said: “She gave a startling, most dramatic and effective interpretation, which could jolt an audience out of its complacency anywheres[sic].” p.30
SteveJ –
Blood At The Root
“Strange Fruit” is one of a handful of songs that makes you stop what you’re doing, turn up the music, and shut the hell up. The rolling cymbals and muted trumpet reveal a soft piano that lures you in. The vocals take their time, languid, lazy, and detached in their storytelling, but before you know it, you’re a witness to a horrifying scene. The hair on the back of your neck stands on end. As one actress, who witnessed Holiday performing the song live says, “That’s what art can do.”Read the rest of my review or contribute your own at […] Margolick’s book stands with the few cultural touchstones, such as Pete Hamill’s Why Sinatra Matters, as essential and a must-read book for not only any serious music fan but anyone with an interest in American history.
Mary E. Sibley –
Red diaper tale
The book has an introduction by Hilton Als. In early 1939 Billie Holiday sang “Strange Fruit.” It made the audience nervous. Someone clapped and then everyone clapped at the night club, Cafe Society.Billie Holiday performed the song countless times. The song encountered great resistance. It was banned by South African Radio during the existence of apartheid. The song was written by a white Jewish school teacher from New York City, Abel Meeropol, writing under the pen name Lewis Allan. He is better known as the adoptive father of the sons of the Rosenbergs. He brought the song to Billie Holiday.Billie Holiday embellished things in her ghost-written autobiography. Cafe Society was the brainchild of Barney Josephson. Meeropol felt that Billie Holiday was not comfortable with the song. Josh White also performed the song.Lynching was a conspicuous theme in black fiction, theater, and art, but not in music. Lynching brutalized feelings everywhere. The U.S. Congress refused over and over again to pass an anti-lynching law. The performance on record is elegant and understated. There was a sense of inherent drama in a Billie Holiday presentation. The record sold ten thousand copies the first week by some accounts. The song made one sit up and listen and think. Hearing the record was an epic event for the fifteen year old Ned Rorem.The title of the song was used by Lillian Smith for her anti-segregation novel. When Billie Holiday moved to the other jazz clubs “Strange Fruit” went over well. The book is part oral history. The collage style is effective. When Billie Holiday was depressed she added “Strange Fruit” to the program.In the American mainstream “Strange Fruit” was too sensitve to sing. The song made its way into a song book used by Pete Seeger and other folk singers. The song was learned by a number of the red diaper babies of the 1950’s era. Nina Simone performed the song in the 1960’s. The book contains a ‘Strange Fruit” discography.
Gaia –
A haunting story, beautiflluy told about the darkest days of black american historya top song for every generation also
Lisa Stevens –
Fine.
Bombshell –
A unique story and interesting read, was worth the wait to receive this good value paperback.