More Strange Fruit

After seeing Billie Holiday perform at the club, Café Society, in New York, Meeropol showed her the poem. Holiday liked it and after working on it with Sonny White turned the poem into the song, Strange Fruit. The record made it to No. 16 on the charts in July 1939. However, the song was denounced by Time Magazine as "a prime piece of musical propaganda" for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).

I would recommend having a listen to anything labelled "a prime piece of musical propaganda" if you can get hold of it, and I would also recommend listening to just about anything by Billie Holiday. But combining the two I would have to say that if you haven't heard it your life is not complete, so go out and find the track and have a listen.

If you are feeling particularly generous you can buy me Strange Fruit: 1937-1939.

Strange Fruit

I took this photo in 2003 whilst visiting Miami. The heat, humidity and very Americaness of it all reminded me of a poem by Abel Meeropol.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Abel Meeropol, Strange Fruit, (1939)