Category: Song
Name: Strange Fruit
Singer: Billie Holiday (1939)
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Writer: Abel Meeropol (credited as Lewis Allan)
Producer: Uncredited
Label: Commodore
Album: N/A
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“Strange Fruit” began life not as a song but as a photograph. When high-school teacher Abel Meeropol saw an image of two black men hanging from a tree, ringed by a crowd of white onlookers, he was moved to pen a poem protesting against the lynching of African-Americans by white vigilantes. “Southern trees bear a strange fruit,” wrote Meeropol, nodding to the scale of the problem in the Deep South but seemingly unaware that the photograph had been taken in the northern town of Marion, Indiana.
Meeropol’s poem came to the attention of Billie Holiday, who added the song to her repertoire. Her first attempt at recording it fell foul of executives at Columbia Records, for whom the subject proved a little too hot to handle. But rival label Commodore stepped in where Columbia feared to tread. And, despite the best efforts of some radio stations, which refused to play it, and concert promoters, who stopped the singer from performing it, Holiday had an unlikely hit in her hands.
Meeropol’s poem and Holiday’s recording are deeply affecting, their message amplified by the simplicity of its transmission: a twelve-line extended metaphor filtered through an unvarnished vocal and a stark accompaniment. The song’s influence has been profound, by it’s still not heard often on the radio. “Strange Fruit” remains a deeply discomfiting listen.” (WF-J)
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