Strange Fruit

Like so many popular songs in 20th century America, our story starts – with a Jew.

Abel Meerpol was a Jew born to Russian immigrant parents in the Bronx in the beginning of the 20th century. He was a singer, a songwriter, and also a communist. He contributed to to the racial justice movement in several ways. He taught James Baldwin and Countee Cullen in their high school days.

But he’s most remembered for his haunting and enchanting poem “Strange Fruit” – published under the pseudonym Lewis Allan (the names of his two stillborn children) in a union teacher magazine, under the name “Bitter Fruit”

The poem, and the song composed with it’s lyrics, serve to protest the very common lynches which occured during the better part of the last century. In particular it was inspired by a photograph of a lynching in Indiana that took place in 1930 – the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. Meerpol himself set the song to music, (though a ghostwritten autobiography of Billie Holiday claimed she played a part, which she herself does not confirm or deny).

The lyrics themselves are quite straightforward at first glance – no particularly inventive rhyming, phrasing, all words are one or two syllables. However, they possess a potent power – able to transfer the exact feel of the aftermath of this violent scene – the calmness and eeriness of death after violence, with beautiful metaphorica.

Here, at least most plausibly, does the grand Billie Holiday enter the picture – one of the crew responsible for Cafe Society, New York’s first integrated nightclub, heard the song and introduced it to her. Holiday first performed the song in 1939. She was afraid of the audience response and possible retaliation against her, but stood steadfast in her father’s honor. She went on to continue to perform the piece as a regular part of her set – but only in very certain conditions – due to its potent qualities. It would finish the set, no service would be allowed, there would be no encore after, and the whole room would be dark with the exception of a light on her face. She would start the song with her eyes closed – similar to a chant or prayer.

When trying to record her most powerful song, Holiday came to several bumps in the road – neither her home studio, Colombia, nor did her producer, agree to record the song for fear of backlash. She turned to her friend Milt Gabler who agreed to record the song after she drove him to tears with her rendition. Holiday recorded the song twice – in 1939 and 1944, with her 1939 rendition becoming Holiday’s biggest selling recording, selling over a million copies. This version would end up in the National Recording Registry in 2003.

Holiday and “Strange Fruit” became inseparable, and the song very much became hers more than it was Meerpol’s. In my opinion, though some covers try and give her a fight, Holiday is the definitive singer of this song – she channels the song like a preacher channeling divinity, her authenticity, her rawness, her emotions, her deep and chilling voice – and her perfect imperfections are so exact for this song. Holiday gives weight to every word she utters – no sound coming out of her mouth is a mistake. She makes us feel heavy, draws us out with her as she walks through the crime scene with us. She gives the song both an earthiness, and otherworldly quality – perfect for the subject matter, the natural metaphors, juxtaposed against the inhumanity of lynching. The feeling that this calm and serene place, surrounded with plants and flowers, has been utterly disturbed – and though life will go on, this “strange fruit” will forever taint the ground on which these tragic events have occurred.