Book Review: Strange Fruit

“There was a certain willful purpose when she sang that tune." (p.102)

Stars: 4/5

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.89-90

According 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

In 1999, Time magazine named it the song of the century.


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sources:
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/05/158933012/the-strange-story-of-the-man-behind-strange-fruit
DVD: Jazz by Ken Burns, Episode Six, Chapter: "Strange Fruit"


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