For other uses, see Strange Fruit (disambiguation).
"Strange Fruit"
Single by Billie Holiday
B-side
"Fine and Mellow"
Released
1939
Recorded
April 20, 1939[1]
Genre
Blues
jazz
Length
3:02
Label
Commodore
Songwriter(s)
Abel Meeropol
Producer(s)
Milt Gabler
Billie Holiday singles chronology
"I'm Gonna Lock My Heart" (1938)
"Strange Fruit" (1939)
"God Bless the Child" (1942)
Official Audio
"Strange Fruit" on YouTube
"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. The song protests the lynching of Black Americans with lyrics that compare the victims to the fruit of trees. Such lynchings had reached a peak in the Southern United States at the turn of the 20th century and the great majority of victims were black.[2] The song has been called "a declaration" and "the beginning of the civil rights movement".[3]
Meeropol set his lyrics to music with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan and performed it as a protest song in New York City venues in the late 1930s, including Madison Square Garden. Holiday's version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978.[4] It was also included in the "Songs of the Century" list of the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.[5] In 2002, "Strange Fruit" was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress[6] as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
^"Billie Holiday recording sessions". Billieholidaysongs.com. Archived from the original on May 28, 2010. Retrieved April 20, 2011.
^Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York, 1944), page 561.
^"Review: Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights", The New York Times, 2000.
^"Hall of Fame". ProQuest. Retrieved June 16, 2015.
^"Songs of the Century". CNN. March 7, 2001.
^Allen, Erin (April 16, 2015). "The Power of a Poem". Library of Congress Blog. Retrieved June 18, 2021.
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