Now more than ever, the United States needs
protest songs.
[♪ Police can't catch me, this a— ♪]
[♪ Strange fruit hangin' ♪]
[♪ From the poplar trees ♪]
In just the past few months, many of the issues
plaguing our nation have been brought to the
forefront of the national conversation by
pop culture’s most notable figures.
[♪ Imagine there's no heaven ♪]
Okay, maybe some of these are better than
others.
The concept of a protest song is not a new
one.
From songs about the defects of the Bush administration,
to the treatment of Vietnam veterans, to women’s
rights, and black empowerment, the hit protest
record is nothing new in American music.
Indeed, protest songs are an essential part
of America’s musical culture; one of our
nation’s most ubiquitous songs, “Yankee
Doodle Dandy,” was one of the first protest
songs in US history...and that came out in
the 1700s!
But what was America’s first protest song
that was actually a hit recording?
The song that pushed the commercial and artistic
boundaries of what protest music could even be?
That song is “Strange Fruit,” a unique
and polarizing song from 1939.
But to fully understand the record, we’ll
have to go back and explore the history of
its singer, its writer, and America’s ugly
tradition of lynching.
The cultural precursors to lynching came from
British colonists in the 17th and 18th centuries,
who brought with them a tradition of extrajudicial
mob punishment such as tarring and feathering.
These nonlethal practices eventually evolved into lynching, a practice in which vigilantes would kill
someone accused of a crime outside the court
system.
Prior to the American Civil War, most victims
of lynchings were actually white men.
After the American Civil War, the South was
defeated militarily but not culturally.
As African Americans were freed from slavery
by the Thirteenth Amendment, granted citizenship
by the Fourteenth Amendment, and promised
the right to vote by the Fifteenth Amendment,
white Southerners, both those who formerly
profited off slave labor and those who did
not, quickly found a scapegoat for their newfound
economic hardships.
Almost immediately, lynchings in the South
became overwhelmingly carried out by white
mobs against black people.
According to the Tuskegee Institute, between
1889 and 1940, 3833 people were lynched in
the US; 90% of these took place in the South
and 80% of the victims were black.
This is a conservative estimate.
African Americans were denied trial and executed
by lynching for alleged crimes, such as theft,
rape, and murder, without any evidence or
due process.
As if this weren’t bad enough, inane cultural
offenses, such as insulting white people,
flirting with white people, acting above one’s
rank in society, doing well financially, or
just being “uppity” were all valid excuses
for black people to be lynched; again no evidence
was required, a simple accusation was enough.
Lynching was used to perpetuate a culture
of white supremacy and intimidate African
Americans from voting.
Even though local governments sometimes acknowledged the illegality of lynching, perpetrators were
rarely charged.
While it is uncomfortable to talk about something
as horrific and charged as the history of
lynching, I believe it would be a disservice
to gloss over.
It is the very essence of Strange Fruit and
there is no place for ignorance about it.
That said, for the next minute or two we’ll
be going into detail.
The typical method of lynching was hanging,
though many victims were also beaten to death,
shot, or burned alive, sometimes even a combination
of the four.
There are documented cases of victims being
raped and bodily mutilated as well.
We often imagine that these murders were carried
out clandestinely in the middle of the night
by hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan, but
it’s important to note that that was not
the norm by any means.
Lynchings were often carried out in broad
daylight by hundreds or thousands of members
of the community.
Said journalist HL Menken, lynchings took
“the place of the merry-go-round, the theatre,
the symphony orchestra, and other diversions
common to large communities.”
Crowds would pose with the defiled bodies
for photographs and even send them as picture
postcards—this postcard depicts the 1915
lynching of Will Stanley; the sender casually
refers to the photo as “the barbecue we
had last night.”
Lynching continued for decades after the Reconstruction
era.
While it primarily took place in the South,
lynching was often overlooked or treated as
a joke by many in the North, considering it
yet another trait that made the South “backward.”
Despite years of campaigning by the NAACP,
a federal anti-lynching law could not be passed.
In August 1930, two young black men from Marion,
Indiana, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, were
arrested on allegations of robbery, murder,
and rape.
The following night, a mob broke into the
jail with sledgehammers and lynched the two,
leaving their bodies to hang on a tree for
hours.
No one was charged for the killing and the
rape allegations were subsequently withdrawn.
It seemed to be yet another senseless act
of violence, but it would ultimately prove
to be catalytic for one of America’s most
important protest songs.
Now let’s fast forward a few years to 1936,
when Abel Meeropol was a 33-year-old English
teacher living in the Bronx.
Meeropol was a prolific writer, composer,
and poet, but hadn’t produced anything that
had made much of an impact outside of leftist
circles.
Meeropol and his wife Anne were communists
and much of Meeropol’s work skewed far-left
of typical American politics.
It was in 1936 that Meeropol saw a photograph
of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith’s lynching.
Filled with rage, he wrote a poem titled “Bitter
Fruit,” which was published in teachers
union publications as well as the Marxist
journal The New Masses.
The poem, which was later retitled “Strange
Fruit,” used the imagery of a fruit growing
on a tree as a euphemism for the hanged bodies
of African American lynching victims.
Said Meeropol, “I wrote ‘Strange Fruit’
because I hate lynching and I hate injustice
and I hate the people who perpetuate it.”
Meeropol believed the poem could work well
as a song, too.
Though he often had others put his words to
music, he insisted on trying himself as he
felt the piece was very important.
The song was performed mostly at leftist gatherings
and by some black performers, but had yet
to make a broader impact or reach a wider
audience outside of those circles.
It would take quite a performer to bring a
song like this to the masses.
Enter Billie Holiday.
Born in 1915 to a life of poverty and abuse,
Holiday began singing as a young teenager
in Harlem nightclubs before being discovered
in 1933 by record producer John Hammond.
Inspired by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong,
Holiday was known for her unique improvisational
singing style, which she developed without
any formal training.
Hammond arranged for Holiday to record with
some of the day’s more popular bandleaders,
such as Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson, introducing
her talent to a national audience.
She got her big break touring with superstar
bandleaders Count Basie and Artie Shaw, scoring
some of her biggest hits during this time.
[♪ Carelessly, I broke it sweetheart ♪]
She didn’t always get on with her collaborators,
however; Basie fired her from his band for
reportedly unprofessional behavior, while
she quit Shaw’s due to the discrimination
she faced as the only black member of an otherwise
all-white band.
Although most of her records in the 1930s
were released under the name of the bandleader,
as was common at the time, she did have enough
notoriety to occasionally record
as a “lead act” herself.
It was this newfound fame that allowed her
to land a gig at Café Society in 1938.
Unlike many Manhattan clubs of the day, Café
Society was integrated.
Owner Barney Josephson’s vision for the
club was a place to mock a lot of then-mainstream
ideas like racism, classism, and celebrity
worship...maybe we could use more places like
this today.
In 1938, Josephson and producer Bob Gordon
discovered Meeropol’s “Strange Fruit”
and asked Holiday to perform it.
It was there, on the smoky dancefloor of Café
Society, that the definitive version of “Strange
Fruit” was born.
Though Holiday was initially uncomfortable
performing the song, it quickly became an
integral part of her set.
The music was likely rewritten and Holiday,
as always, warped the vocal melody to her liking.
Josephson arranged special instructions for
its performance as the final song of her tri-nightly set.
All service was halted and any patrons who
weren’t quiet were asked to leave.
The room went completely dark, then a pin
spotlight was cast on Holiday’s face.
She would then sing “Strange Fruit” and
the lights would cut out immediately after her performance.
She would not return for an encore or bow,
regardless of the applause.
In Josephson’s words, “people had to remember
‘Strange Fruit,’ get their insides burned with it."
Holiday quickly laid claim to the song and
disliked when others, such as Café Society
performer Josh White, performed it.
Recognizing “Strange Fruit” as Holiday’s
new signature song, it was even advertised
by name in newspapers.
The song was destined to be recorded, even
though Holiday’s producer John Hammond didn’t
like the song and her record label, Colombia,
wanted nothing to do with it, presumably not
to alienate Southern record buyers.
Instead, Holiday convinced Milt Gabler of
Commodore Records, a small, left-wing indie
label run out of a music store, to let her
put the song on wax.
After a 4-hour recording session in a Midtown
Manhattan studio, the fury of Billie Holiday’s
“Strange Fruit” was finally distilled
on wax.
The imagery of “Strange Fruit” is haunting.
Meeropol’s lyrics illustrate the dehumanization
of African Americans, describing the lifeless
black bodies of lynching victims hanging from
trees left out to decompose in the elements.
The suggestion that the bodies are a fruit
naturally borne of Southern trees is particularly
disturbing to this day.
“Strange Fruit” also offers a scathing
critique of the notion of a picturesque and
hospitable South.
Released in 1939, the same year that saw Gone
with the Wind glamorize the Antebellum South
as a lost age of beauty and chivalry, the
lyrics suggest that someone’s enjoyment
of those idealistic southern landscapes could
be ruined by the scent of a lynching victim’s
burning flesh.
It would have been natural for a singer to
take this material in a woozily sad direction
[♪ I've been dancing with tears in my eyes ♪]
or as a powerful blues lament,
[♪ Ain't got nobody, nobody ♪]
But that simply wasn't Billie Holiday.
What I love about Holiday’s work is the
emotion and wit she brought to every performance.
She sells the listener love, heartbreak, and
pain with all the skill of a dramatic lead,
but imbues every syllable with the intelligence
of a Greek chorus.
Holiday knew just when to massage a syllable
to send a message.
On some of her finest recordings, she somehow
manages to bare her soul to the audience while
simultaneously giving them a knowing wink.
But this song isn’t like other Billie Holiday
songs, either.
She still warps the lyrics like no other,
but her wistfulness is omitted in favor of fury.
People mistake this song as being sad just
because it’s slow and restrained, but if
you really listen to the record, it’s clear
that Holiday is mad; she’s a woman on a mission.
She spares the listener theatrics and delivers
fiery lyrics with an ice cold resolve.
Instead of histrionics, she treats the subject
matter with pure contempt.
“Strange Fruit'' is the musical equivalent
of Holiday staring you dead in the eye for
two straight minutes.
The steeliness of the song doesn’t leave
me feeling empowered, or angry, or sad.
After the cold, unresolved vocalization of
“crop,” it leaves me feeling hollowed
out, empty, and hopeless.
[♪ Crop ♪]
There are elements of jazz, blues, and folk
here, but Holiday’s definitive, minimalist
recording doesn’t fit neatly into any of
those categories.
The technical recording quality does not match
that of Holiday’s contemporary work at major
labels, giving the record a tarnished and
distant feel.
It’s truly a piece of art all its own.
Released mid-1939 with “Fine and Mellow”
on the B-side, “Strange Fruit” unsurprisingly
struck a nerve with many people.
After finally hearing Holiday perform his
work, Abel Meeropol said “this is exactly
what I wanted the song to do and why I wrote
it.
Billie Holiday’s styling of the song is
incomparable and fulfilled the bitterness
and shocking quality I had hoped the song
would have.”
Many jazz critics and contemporaries of the
time, however, reviewed “Strange Fruit”
unfavorably, noting that it was unlike Holiday’s
usual fare.
Jazz scholar Martin Williams called it “moving
propaganda, perhaps, but not poetry and not art."
Jerry Wexler said he loved the message but
said it didn’t offer anything melodically,
while John Hammond, Holiday’s own producer,
said it was “artistically the worst thing
that ever happened” to Holiday.
Leonard Feather of Melody Maker called it
“grim and moving,” while Variety called
it “propaganda in swingtime” and “depressing”
in two separate reviews.
A Down Beat magazine critic said “perhaps
I expected too much of ‘Strange Fruit,’
the ballyhooed...tune which, via gory wordage
and hardly any melody, expounds an anti-lynching
campaign...at least i’m sure it’s not
for Billie.”
The highest mainstream praise came from New
York Post critic Samuel Grafton, who said,
"If the anger of the exploited ever mounts
high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise.”
There weren’t any national Billboard charts
in the 1930s, but it’s feasible that “Strange
Fruit” was a moderate hit in the United
States.
Chart historian Joel Whitburn retroactively
ranked the song as a #16 hit in his book Pop
Memories, though the historical accuracy of
this book has been disputed.
Several quotes from David Margolick’s book
on “Strange Fruit” suggest that the song
was popular only among the liberal elite and
black intellectuals, but the book also notes
that many teenagers around the country were
attracted to the song because of its taboo
subject matter.
Conflicting reports of the song either being
a million seller or a niche favorite suggest
that it probably falls somewhere in the middle.
There are many tales of the recording being
banned on the radio, but there are no definitive
records of this ever happening.
That said, it goes without saying that this
song certainly sold more copies than it was
ever played on air, as there are many accounts
of radio DJs having to fight to play the song.
Advocates of a federal antillynching law sent
copies of the song to members of congress,
where Southern senators were about to filibuster
yet another antilynching bill to stop it from
being passed.
The New York Theater Arts Committee sent copies
of “Strange Fruit” to senators, claiming
that millions of Americans had found it “terribly
and strangely moving.”
If one thing is for sure about Billie Holiday's
life, it is that she and “Strange Fruit”
would be forever intertwined, both publicly and privately.
Holiday was so attached to the song that she
reportedly listened to her recording of it
with friends, falling into a deep melancholy
when doing so.
She later made various claims that the song
was written especially for her or that she
had written it herself, although we know this
isn’t true.
[And now I'd like to sing a tune, it written especially for me.]
[It's titled "Strange Fruit."]
Songwriter Irene Wilson claimed to have seen
Holiday break a chair over an audience member’s
head after he made an obscene joke about the
song.
Drummer Lee Young said Holiday didn’t like
to sing it because it hurt her so much; she
had enough hurt to go around from her struggles
with addiction and abusive relationships.
Besides, the song seemed to make her just
as many enemies as it did friends.
But one tradition remained: whenever she did
perform it, it was always her closing number.
Vernon Jarrett, an influential journalist,
described seeing Holiday perform the song live.
[JARRETT:] It was indescribable, man.
She was standing up there singing this song as though this was for real, as if she had just witnessed a lynching.
That’s what knocked me out.
I thought she was about to cry.
She was looking at no one in the audience.
She could have been a little high, like she was singing to herself:
“This is for me. Fuck all of you.”
She impressed me as someone who had also been wronged, as if she’d been lynched herself in some fashion or another….
When I heard her sing I heard other kinds of lynchings, not just hanging from trees.
I saw my own mother and father, two college-educated people, and all the crap they had to go through….
To me, that was part of the whole lynch syndrome, the lynching of the body and spirit put together.
That’s the way her face looked when she sang that...
I don’t think it was just that she was high.
She was making her peace with her own lynched existence.
Holiday earned $1500 for the four songs she
recorded that day for Commodore Records, though
the small label never turned its back on her.
If ever she needed money, Commodore would
give her cash right out of the register.
Holiday would record “Strange Fruit” four
more times during her lifetime, although none
quite captured the subtlety of the original.
As the years go by, you can hear Holiday’s
voice wearing thinner in each subsequent recording
from her years of alcohol and drug abuse.
In 1959 at the age of 44, 20 years after she
first recorded “Strange Fruit,” Billie
Holiday died penniless, handcuffed to a hospital
bed.
I hope to tell her story in full someday on
this channel.
Songwriter Abel Meeropol saw some success,
writing a few songs that were recorded by
Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra, but nothing ever came close to the success or importance of “Strange Fruit.”
He and his wife are otherwise best remembered
for adopting the orphans of executed atom
spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
For all the record’s importance as one of
the first songs directly addressing racism
and white supremacy, its legacy didn’t seem
to immediately translate to the civil rights
movement just one generation later.
The baby boomer generation’s protest songs
were more hopeful and positive, whether they
be updated classics,
[JOAN BAEZ WITH CROWD:]
♪ We shall overcome someday ♪
stirring soul ballads,
[SAM COOKE:] ♪ But I know a change gon' come ♪
or even a dance record
with that took on a new meaning
[MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS:]
♪ Music swingin', dancin' in the street ♪
♪ Philadelphia, PA ♪
“Strange Fruit” did, however, grow in
stature as the years passed on.
Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records,
called it “a declaration of war...the beginning
of the civil rights movement.”
Civil rights activist Angela Davis said the
song “put the elements of protest and resistance
back at the center of contemporary black musical
culture.”
A 1944 Lillian Smith novel about interracial
relationships was named Strange Fruit after the song.
Holiday’s recording was inducted into the
Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978 and the December
31, 1999 issue of Time named it Song of the
Century.
Nina Simone’s 1965 recording is the first
notable cover and probably the last great one.
[♪ Strange fruit hangin'... ♪]
Said Simone,
[NINA SIMONE:] The ugliness of it. That is about the ugliest song I have ever heard.
[MIKE:] And perhaps it’s a lack of that understanding
that has caused so many of the song’s subsequent
covers, in my opinion, to miss the mark.
Diana Ross recorded the song for her portrayal
of Billie Holiday in the 1972 biopic Lady Sings the Blues;
while Ross
gives an otherwise excellent performance,
her voice is just too sweet and warm to convey
the message of “Strange Fruit.”
[DIANA ROSS:] ♪ For the tree... ♪
This film also perpetuates the story that
Holiday wrote the song herself.
Further covers came from dozens of artists,
including Jeff Buckley
[♪ Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar... ♪]
Siouxsie and the Banshees,
[♪ Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees... ♪]
and UB40.
[♪ Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar tree... ♪]
But they all miscarry in my opinion.
While I generally love covers that take a
song in an original direction, every embellishment
comes across as a stain on the song’s message
to me.
“Strange Fruit” is an ugly song that doesn’t
need any ornamentation.
Singer Andra Day, who is set to portray Holiday
in an upcoming biopic, also covered the song in 2017.
[ANDRA DAY:] ♪ Crop ♪
Unsurprisingly, it’s hip hop that is keeping
the message and spirit of “Strange Fruit”
alive today; dozens of rap songs namedrop,
interpolate, or sample the song, many of them
from just the past five years.
Perhaps most affected was the multitalented
Lena Horne.
On lynching, Horne said:
[LENA HORNE:] When I was a little
girl I knew about the fear it aroused in my
people and in my mother...It was something
that I wanted to forget.
She was putting into words
what so many people had seen and lived through.
She seemed to be performing in melody and
words the same thing I was feeling in my heart.
She was angry.
Many people realized that tears weren’t
doing any good.
If “Strange Fruit” forced Horne to remember
the horrors of lynching, it was worthwhile,
as she went on to work with Eleanor Roosevelt
to get anti-lynching laws passed.
In turn, “Strange Fruit” paved the way
for a greater appreciation of protest songs.
Dorian Lynskey writes in 33 Revolutions Per
Minute: A History of Protest Songs,
"Up until this point protest songs functioned
as propaganda, but ‘Strange Fruit’ proved
they could be art.”
If you want to know more about “Strange Fruit,” there’s plenty out there.
For hundreds of quotes, recollections, and
conflicting accounts about the song, I highly
recommend David Margolick’s Strange Fruit:
The Biography of a Song, which was one of
my primary sources for this video
If I had written this piece a few years ago,
I might have naïvely ended it with a “and
thank God we don’t lynch people anymore"
and called it a day, but that would
have wholly missed the point.
As long as “black lives matter” is still
a controversial statement, we still need “Strange Fruit."
In a place where arguing that the police should
be held accountable for their unlawful actions
against black people is taken as a political
statement, we still need “Strange Fruit.”
In a nation that sees protesters for racial
equality mocked, belittled, tear gassed, and
even run over, we still need “Strange Fruit.”
When black people can be killed for selling
cigarettes, using a fraudulent check, jogging,
playing in a park, answering the door, leaving
the door ajar, eating ice cream at home, or
even sleeping in bed, we still need “Strange
Fruit.”
For generations, “Strange Fruit” was too
forgotten, too grim, too taboo, or too mishandled
to have the legacy it deserves.
Only within my lifetime do I believe it’s
finally gotten the critical reevaluation and
widespread acclaim it merits.
If you didn’t know the song before this,
just close your eyes, play it, and let Billie speak.
This is a record we can’t afford to forget.
