208: Billie Holiday sings “Strange Fruit”
Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), was an American jazz singer born Eleanora Fagan and later nicknamed Lady Day. According to Holiday’s accounts, she was recruited by a brothel, worked as a prostitute, and was eventually imprisoned for a short time. It was in Harlem in the early 1930s that she started singing for tips in various night clubs. Holiday was recording for Columbia in the late 1930s when she was introduced to “Strange Fruit,” a song based on a poem about lynching written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. Meeropol used the pseudonym “Lewis Allen” for the poem, which was set to music and performed at teachers’ union meetings. Her producers at Columbia found the subject matter too sensitive so Commodore Records’ Milt Gabler agreed to record it for his label. That was done in April, 1939 and “Strange Fruit” remained in her repertoire for over twenty years.