4/7/23 O&A NYC HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILLIE: Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit

Eleanora Fagan was born onApril 7, 1915 in Philadelphia. By 1929 she and her mother moved to Harlem and by age 17 Billie Holiday started he professional career as a jazz and swing music vocalist. Her friend and music partner, Lester Young nicknamed her Lady Day. In 1939 she sang and recorded Strange Fruit a civil rights protest song. 

Written by New York City public school teacher and Bronx native Abel Meeropol as a poem and published in 1937, it protested American racism, particularly the lynching of African- Americans. Meeropol cited this photograph of the lynching of Thomas Ships and Abram Smith,  August 7, 1930, as inspiring his poem.

The lyrics are an extended metaphor linking a tree’s fruit with lynching victims. Meeropol set it to music and, with his wife and the Africn- American singer Laura Duncan, performed it as a protest song in New York City venues in the late 1930s, including Madison Square Garden. 

The song continues to be covered by numerous artists, including Nina Simone and Annie Lennox  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. 

 

Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit

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