[Dixielandjazz] strange fruit, a song that changed the world

Fri Oct 23 21:38:34 PDT 2015

I heard Billie sing Strange Fruit when I was a student in D.C. in 1957. One of the finest moments ever.—Charlie

> On Oct 23, 2015, at 4:01 PM, Marek Boym <marekboym at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
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> From: delanceyplace.com <delanceyplace at gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 10:42 AM
> Subject: strange fruit, a song that changed the world
> 
> 
> 'Strange Fruit' one of 'the ten songs that actually changed the world.'
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> 
> Today's *encore* selection -- *Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song *by David
> Margolick.  Billie Holiday (1915-1959), considered by some to be the
> greatest of the female jazz vocalists, introduced 'Strange Fruit', a song
> about lynching, into a world of songs about love and romance:
> 
> "A few years back, *Q*, a British music publication, named 'Strange Fruit'
> one of 'the ten songs that actually changed the world.' Like any
> revolutionary act, the song initially encountered great resistance. Holiday
> and the black folksinger Josh White, who began performing it a few years
> after Holiday first did [in 1939], were abused, sometimes physically, by
> irate nightclub patrons -- 'crackers' as Holiday called them. Columbia
> Records, Holiday's label in the late 1930s, refused to record it. ...
> 'Strange Fruit' marked a watershed, praised by some, lamented by others, in
> Holiday's evolution from exuberant jazz singer to chanteuse of lovelorn
> pain and loneliness. Once Holiday added it to her repertoire, some of its
> sadness seemed to cling to her; as she deteriorated physically, the song
> took on new poignancy and immediacy. ...
> 
> "Lynchings -- during which blacks were murdered with unspeakable brutality,
> often in a carnival-like atmosphere, and then, with the acquiescence if not
> the complicity of local authorities, hung from trees for all to see -- were
> rampant in the South following the Civil War and for many years thereafter.
> According to figures kept by the Tuskegee Institute -- conservative figures
> -- between 1889 and 1940, 3,833 people were lynched; ninety percent of them
> were murdered in the South, and four-fifths of them were black. Lynchings
> tended to occur in poor, small towns -- often taking the place the famed
> newspaper columnist H.L. Mencken once said, 'of the merry-go-round, the
> theater, the symphony orchestra.' ... And they were meted out for a host of
> alleged offenses -- not just for murder, theft and rape, but for insulting
> a white person, boasting, swearing or buying a car. In some instances, it
> was no infraction at all; it was just time to remind 'uppity' blacks to
> stay in their place. ...
> 
> "The night that she first sang 'Strange Fruit' [at Cafe Society in New
> York] 'there wasn't even a patter of applause when I finished,' she later
> wrote in her autobiography. 'Then a lone person began to clap nervously.
> Then, suddenly, everybody was clapping.' The applause grew louder and a bit
> less tentative as 'Strange Fruit' became a nightly ritual for Holiday, then
> one of her most successful records, then one of her signature songs, at
> least in those places where it was safe to perform."
> 
> Lyrics:
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song
> <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001mPhPTNYbHRnxmkltyADIxV8X5nDgnp3sRUMiFW-rTRN8V7MFfLi1x0_hMnpNUbEGKafewGEEMt4TiU3HFmwmo1sEGMLlZoIBCz7NGOc0XAq4z91yPqxwFr8mYbyh4-ye1gOQSQPGVxyYxTUtk8QZWvVHX4K6ln1cE-NvAdnrS_lE4IJR6ViAq8QKKscWICtfBlrcbpnNhU4Js75fTb6pfRH2f64sucU5uFKt-v1IDybR7luJu4OGTdjgrN_-GHLzfyAbEzQJyRWMsLS55Y-x6cehxvkuMbCGxUNRbPGl9hb07Yw0wsdH3ey9czf_s9eSbiLby137srE14uEvyKshuQ3SwqHfm7-6&c=NxvrB5bvEkTRR1z0jp6PQki9bq6glktlSYP4AD7C_7ERpqGTQmNToQ==&ch=NWd--bljwcDs9S8uKCX2JkumOjJYJyo9CFGz5tP8FmN_QOvRo4yGvw==>
> Author: David Margolick
> Publisher: Harper Perennial
> Copyright 2001 by David Margolick
> Pages: 8, 19-20, 3-4
> 
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