![]() ![]() It might come as a surprise to listeners that such a gripping piece was written by a white schoolteacher, but not those familiar with the unconventional life of Abel Meeropol. After about seven performances, she says, she realized she couldn't sing it anymore.Įven while she was performing "Strange Fruit," she never considered singing it in the U.S. "When I did that show, I kind of walked around with a cloud over my head."Īnd when she began singing the song again in Europe in the early '90s, in support of her "In Montreux" album, Bridgewater found herself breaking down in tears by the end of it. "It brings up all the bad racial incidents that I saw and that I knew happened to other people, it brings up this feeling that won't go away. "It puts you in a very strange place," says Bridgewater. The slightly bent blue notes, the running-out-of-breath phrase endings and the occasional crack in the voice told the story.īridgewater, who sang the piece nightly during the 1980s when she was portraying Holiday in the play "Lady Day" in Europe, never will forget the song's hold on her. No Ella Fitzgerald-type scat singing or Sarah Vaughan-style melodic adornments were called for, and none was sung. To hear Holiday unfurl the dramatically charged lyrics with such profound understatement-her gritty, grainy alto every bit as honest as the subject demanded-was to feel the power of her message. Yet it was Holiday, more than anyone, who gave the song its identity with several stark, emotionally wrenching recordings of a tune she never tired of reinterpreting. By comparison, "Strange Fruit" is not so much an early cry as an especially painful and potent one. In truth, however, cries for civil rights have resonated in American musical culture for centuries, first through the Negro spirituals that pleaded for deliverance, later in blues laments and jazz dirges. The song even has inspired a slender but worthy book, released earlier this year by Vanity Fair writer David Margolick and titled "Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society and an Early Cry for Civil Rights." Beyond the searing recordings by Wilson and Bridgewater, "Strange Fruit" has been revisited by Duane Wiggins of "Tony! Toni! Tone!" (earlier this year), by the Sounds of Blackness (1994), even by rockers such as Sting (1986) and Tori Amos (1994). Perhaps that's why the song won't go away, even if the artists who have recorded it most persuasively no longer can bring themselves to sing it. "But when you look at all the events that have happened to blacks in the past few years, it's very close to the way it used to be when `Strange Fruit' was new. "I think we have the illusion of moving away from that time and place, but we still have pretty much the same attitudes when it comes to race-they're just perhaps not as open, not as vociferous as they were in the past. I don't think we've gone anywhere since Billie sang it. "I used to sing that song often in Atlanta, whenever I was there," recalls Cassandra Wilson, who recorded "Strange Fruit" on her "New Moon Daughter" album of 1995 but dropped the tune from her repertoire not long after. So when Billie Holiday's musical heirs attempt to sing "Strange Fruit," they see much more than a fable of a lynching in the Old South. And racially motivated beatings such as the Lenard Clark case have roiled Chicago and several other cities in recent years. Last month, 17-year-old Raynard Johnson was found hanging from a pecan tree in front of his family's Mississippi home though a pathologist deemed this a suicide, Johnson's family considers it a lynching. ![]() Two years ago, three Texans dragged James Byrd Jr. ![]() Although the lynchings of the Jim Crow era may be consigned to the past, racial violence is chillingly contemporary. Though the piece dates from a distant era, its cry against brutal racism still shatters those who attempt to sing it in public. ![]() Though the song has gained new prominence thanks to several recent recordings and a book-length study of its impact, "Strange Fruit" has had a haunting effect on those who record it: They admire the song, but they won't perform it anymore. Not even the prospect of noisy ovations, however, can persuade today's pre-eminent jazz divas to perform "Strange Fruit" in concert. Typically, the crowd responds with stunned silence, then, after what seems an eternity or two, erupts into nearly deafening applause. So much, in fact, that audiences usually don't know how to react when a singer reaches the end of "Strange Fruit," as searing an indictment of the horrors of racism as any penned in English. More than 60 years since Billie Holiday first performed the most incendiary song in her repertoire, its lyrics still burn. Lyrics reprinted by Permission of Music Sales Corp. ![]()
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