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"Strange Fruit" is a song written and composed by Abel Meeropol (under his pseudonym Lewis Allan) and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. The lyrics were drawn from a poem by Meeropol published in 1937.
Its working title was Jordan is so Chilly, but Smith retitled it Strange Fruit prior to publication. [2] In her 1956 autobiography, singer Billie Holiday wrote that Smith named the book after her 1939 song "Strange Fruit", which was about lynching and racism against African Americans. Smith maintained the book's title referred to the "damaged ...
Meeropol wrote the anti-lynching poem "Strange Fruit" (1937), first published as "Bitter Fruit" in a teacher union publication. He later set it to music. The song was recorded and performed by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. [6] Holiday notes in the book Lady Sings the Blues that she co-wrote the music to the song with Meeropol and Sonny White.
Get to know the story behind Billie Holiday's controversial "Strange Fruit," now the subject of Hulu biopic "The United States vs. Billie Holiday."
Today, “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday, “A Change is Gonna Come,” Sam Cooke and “What’s Going On,” Marvin Gaye remain relevant to Black America.
In 1985, a statue of Billie Holiday was erected in Baltimore; the statue was completed in 1993 with additional panels of images inspired by her seminal song "Strange Fruit". The Billie Holiday Monument is located at Pennsylvania and West Lafayette avenues in Baltimore's Upton neighborhood. [ 120 ]
"Blood on the Leaves" was released on June 18, 2013, as the seventh track on West's sixth studio album Yeezus. [10] According to Mohawke, "Blood on the Leaves" was originally intended to be the album's opener instead of "On Sight", but was changed "at the last minute" due to "the message ["On Sight"] puts across that [Yeezus] is a very different record."
Billie Holiday’s haunting rendition of "Strange Fruit" powerfully protested violence, making it a "rhetorical" protest song of political and social systems of her time. The sociologist R. Serge Denisoff saw protest songs rather narrowly in terms of their function, as forms of persuasion or propaganda. [6]