historiq: lady day’s strange fruit

historiq is dandy’s article series about queer people and events that made a significant impact on history.

1939. Manhattan.
Drinks clink, cigarettes smolder, and murmured conversations ebb and flow, as Billie Holiday performs her regular set at her favorite West Village jazz joint, Cafe Society. She takes the stage for her final number, and as the introduction plays, the noise dies down, and per her request, all service stops. A stiff silence and pitch darkness flood the room, save a single spotlight on Holiday's face. She sings.

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

The spotlight shuts off. The room goes completely black. As the club lights rise, Holiday is nowhere to be found and does not return for an encore.

Holiday at the Downbeat Jazz Club, New York, c. February 1947 :: photo: William P. Gottlieb

Lady Day, as her friend and music partner Lester Young first called her, would bring every performance at Cafe Society to a close with the same soul-stirring number. The song, written by Jewish Bronx schoolteacher Abel Meeropol about lynchings in the American south, resonated well with most of the integrated club's white patrons, but others would walk out in disdain.

Holiday approached Columbia Records, who she had been recording with at the time, to allow her to produce the song for her album. Due to the inevitably controversial subject matter, they declined, but altered her contract so she could record it with independent label Commodore Records.

Strange Fruit skyrocketed in the charts, but faced severe backlash from many southern politicians, who were already in an uproar about the negative effects jazz culture was having on mainstream society. As the song's popularity grew, so too did the ire of Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner Harry Anslinger, who, after attempting to ban the song and forbid Holiday from performing it, is said to have framed her in a heroin drug bust for which she spent ten months in federal prison.

Like many black American's at the time, who smoked "the devil's weed" and played "the devil's music," Holiday was condemned as a social degenerate. Somewhat surprisingly, even though she was bisexual, having engaged in lesbian relationships in prison, and openly dated socialite Louise Crane and actor Tallulah Bankhead, it wasn't her sexuality that proved to be the most controversial facet of her lifestyle.

Holiday performed Strange Fruit for two decades, most often using the same haunting staging with which it premiered. On May 31st, 1959, she was taken to the hospital for treatment of liver and heart disease resulting from a lifetime of drinking and drug use. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics then raided her hospital room and placed her under police watch. She died on July 17th of heart failure caused by cirrhosis.

Strange Fruit lives on today. It was lauded as the "Song of the Century" in 1999 by Time Magazine, and you might recognize it from the Nina Simone cover, which was sampled in Kanye's West's Blood on the Leaves.

Strange Fruit was at once a solemn protest and a cry for action, many have even claimed that its rise in popularity is what kicked off the Civil Rights Movement. Whatever you believe, one thing has proven unambiguously true: Strange Fruit has left an indelible stain on the fabric of American history.

Additional Viewing:
Hulu :: The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021) :: directed by Lee Daniels :: Rotten Tomatoes audience score at time of writing: 87%

Significant Sources:
USAToday
Biography
Distractify
Wikipedia