Billie Holiday- “Strange Fruit”
For the most part, I try to keep issues out of the Soothing the Beast BFP/Jamiol’s Music Pick and keep it about the music. Tonight we’re going over to the serious side with Billie Holiday’s haunting song “Strange Fruit. The song came from a poem written by Abel Meeropol, son of Russian Jewish immigrants and a high school English teacher from the Bronx. He wrote the poem after seeing a photograph of a lynching in a civil-rights magazine. The photo was a shot of 2 black men hanging from a tree after they had been lynched in Marion, Indiana on August 7, 1930. The two men are the “Strange Fruit.” The poem was printed in a teachers union publication and Meeropol set his words to music. He played it for a New York club owner who gave it to Billie Holiday. Holiday’s performance of this song is nothing less than incredible…The words are below. Enjoy…DJPJ.
“Strange Fruit”
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin’ eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin’ 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 the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop