Billie Holiday

Strange Fruit is still a song for today

by Edwin Moore
Saturday 18 September 2010 10.00 BST

Made famous by Billie Holiday, Abel Meeropol's lyrics offer a powerful plea for racial tolerance that is no less relevant today

On the last day of 1999, Time magazine selected Strange Fruit as its choice for the best song of the passing century. The lyric is not as well as known as it should be, but it carries a passionate message for all time with its vibrant opposition to those who preach racial or religious hatred and intolerance in the US.

It is still a common assumption that Billie Holiday wrote the song; indeed her authorship was asserted in her 1956 ghostwritten autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, but the work was ghostwritten to an extent she would later acknowledge in fine laconic manner: "I ain't never read that book." The original source of the song is a poem called Strange Fruit, written in the 30s by the young Jewish poet and communist Abel Meeropol (who also wrote under the name of Lewis Allan, the first names given to his stillborn children).

The poem was inspired by a photograph of the lynching of two young black men in Indiana. Copies of such photographs were very popular in the American south, and the images can be easily found on the web. One particularly disturbing example shows a mother and her child hanging from a bridge. In many cases, the hanged victims are surrounded by smiling white people waving at the camera. They sometimes have their children with them. The horrible truth is that in parts of the south in the early 20th century, the hanging of black people in public was a family occasion; lynching was part of the social fabric. "I wrote Strange Fruit," said Meeropol, "because I hate lynching, and I hate injustice, and I hate the people who perpetuate it."

Meeropol recognised that he had written something out of the ordinary and turned the poem into a song, which quickly became popular in New York and was sung at Madison Square Gardens by the black singer Laura Duncan. In April 1939, Meeropol visited a New York club frequented by Holiday called Cafe Society. This club, founded by another Jewish socialist, Barney Josephson, has been described as bringing about a "milestone" in American integration between black and white in its brave efforts to create an environment in which white and black could mix socially.

Josephson introduced the two and Meeropol sang the song for Holiday. A few days later, Meeropol returned to the club to hear Holiday sing his masterwork: "She gave a startling, most dramatic and effective interpretation of the song which could jolt the audience out of its complacency anywhere. This was exactly what I wanted the song to do and why I wrote it. Billie Holiday's styling fulfilled the bitterness and the shocking quality I had hoped the song would have. The audience gave a tremendous ovation."

Released in 1939, the record eventually sold over a million copies and became one of the most influential songs of all time, thanks to its rare combination of potent lyrics, a decent melodic line and a beautiful voice. Protest song became commercial, as well as being an expression of idealism: the song became a standard theme for the burgeoning civil rights movement, a song that previously non-political citizens could find themselves humming: just what Meeropol hoped would happen.

Meeropol also wrote (with Earl Robinson) the civil rights anthem The House I Live In, which was used for a 1945 11-minute movie of the same name, in which Frank Sinatra sings about religious tolerance to white children. The effect of Meeropol's song in this brief movie – the song enjoyed a brief resurgence in the US after 9/11 – was somewhat lessened by the removal of a stanza celebrating racial harmony (the reference to white and black living side by side was also cut from Sinatra's first recording of the song). The movie's distributor felt America was not yet ready for an explicit message on racial harmony. A furious Meeropol had to be escorted from the cinema when he saw what been done to his song.

In 1953, Meeropol and his wife Anne adopted Ethel and Julius Rosenberg's two children after their parents' execution for treason. Meeropol's significance to the American civil rights movement has been underplayed; it remains too controversial to give due credit to a communist.

Jazz writer Leonard Feather called Strange Fruit "the first significant protest in words and music, the first unmuted cry against racism". In these troubled times for America, when the hate merchants are selling their malignant wares throughout the media, the country needs to remember its true music, the songs (from Irving Berlin to Bob Dylan) that have endeared America to the world with their defiant and joyous response to injustice. New York in particular should remember that inspired Bronx teacher, and listen again to Holiday sing his great song:

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black body swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

THE GUARDIAN

Abel Meeropol watches as his sons, Robert and Michael, play with a train set.
Courtesy of Robert and Michael Meeropol

The Strange Story Of The Man Behind 'Strange Fruit'

by Elizabeth Blair

SEPTEMBER 05, 2012 3:24 AM ET

One of Billie Holiday's most iconic songs is "Strange Fruit," a haunting protest against the inhumanity of racism. Many people know that the man who wrote the song was inspired by a photograph of a lynching. But they might not realize that he's also tied to another watershed moment in America's history.

The man behind "Strange Fruit" is New York City's Abel Meeropol, and he really has two stories. They both begin at Dewitt Clinton High School, a public high school in the Bronx that has an astonishing number of famous people in its alumni. James Baldwin went there. So did Countee Cullen, Richard Rodgers, Burt Lancaster, Stan Lee, Neil Simon, Richard Avedon and Ralph Lauren.

Meeropol graduated from Dewitt Clinton in 1921; he went on to teach English there for 17 years. He was also a poet and a social activist, says Gerard Pelisson, who wrote a book about the school.

In the late 1930s, Pellison says, Meeropol "was very disturbed at the continuation of racism in America, and seeing a photograph of a lynching sort of put him over the edge."

Meeropol once said the photograph "haunted" him "for days." So he wrote a poem about it, which was then printed in a teachers union publication. An amateur composer, Meeropol also set his words to music. He played it for a New York club owner — who ultimately gave it to Billie Holiday.

When Holiday decided to sing "Strange Fruit," the song reached millions of people. While the lyrics never mention lynching, the metaphor is painfully clear:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning 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 a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

In 1999, Time magazine named "Strange Fruit" the "song of the century." The Library of Congress put it in the National Recording Registry. It's been recorded dozens of times. Herbie Hancock and Marcus Miller did an instrumental version, with Miller evoking the poem on his mournful bass clarinet.

Miller says he was surprised to learn the song was written by a white Jewish guy from the Bronx. "Strange Fruit," he says, took extraordinary courage both for Meeropol to write and for Holiday to sing.

"The '60s hadn't happened yet," he says. "Things like that weren't talked about. They certainly weren't sung about."

New York lawmakers didn't like "Strange Fruit." In 1940, Meeropol was called to testify before a committee investigating communism in public schools. They wanted to know whether the American Communist Party had paid him to write the song. They had not — but, like many New York teachers in his day, Meeropol was a Communist.

Journalist David Margolick, who wrote Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, says, "There are a million reasons to disparage communism now. But American Communism, one point it had in its favor was that it was concerned about civil rights very early."

Meeropol left his teaching job at Dewitt Clinton in 1945. He eventually quit the Communist Party.

And that's where the second part of Meeropol's story begins. The link is the pseudonym he used when writing poetry and music: Lewis Allan.

"Abel Meeropol's pen name 'Lewis Allan' were the names of their children who were stillborn, who never lived," says his son, Robert Meeropol. He and his older brother, Michael, were raised by Abel and his wife, Anne Meeropol, after the boys' parents —Ethel and Julius Rosenberg — were executed for espionage in 1953.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for conspiring to give atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs had also been Communists.

i

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are taken to prison after being found guilty of nuclear espionage. They were subsequently executed.

Keystone/Getty Images

The couple's trial and execution made national headlines, and there was also something of a salacious element, given that the Rosenbergs were a married couple. News accounts described it as "the first husband and wife to die in the electric chair."

At the time, the Rosenberg sons, Robert and Michael, were 6 and 10, respectively. News photographs of the boys show them dressed in suits visiting their parents in prison.

"They're these little boys and they're wearing these caps, and they look so young and so vulnerable. It's really a very poignant image," says Margolick.

Robert Meeropol says that in the months following his parents' execution, it was unclear who would take care of him and his brother. It was the height of McCarthyism. Even family members were fearful of being in any way associated with the Rosenbergs or Communism.

Then, at a Christmas party at the home of W.E.B. Du Bois, the boys were introduced to Abel and Anne Meeropol. A few weeks later, they were living with them.

"One of the most remarkable things was how quickly we adapted," Robert says. "First of all, Abel, what I remember about him as a 6-year-old was that he was a real jokester. He liked to tell silly jokes and play word games, and he would put on these comedy shows that would leave me rolling."

There is something else about Abel Meeropol that seems to connect the man who wrote "Strange Fruit" to the man who created a loving family out of a national scandal. "He was incredibly softhearted," Robert says.

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Anne Meeropol plays a song on guitar for her sons, Robert and Michael.

Courtesy of Robert and Michael Meeropol

For example, there was an old Japanese maple tree in their backyard, which sent out many new seedlings every year.

"I was the official lawnmower," Robert says, "and I was going to mow over them, and he said, 'Oh, no, you can't kill the seedlings!' I said, 'What are you going to do with them, Dad? There are dozens of them.'

"Well, he dug them up and put them in coffee cans and lined them up along the side of the house. And there were hundreds of them. But he couldn't bring himself to just kill them. It was just something he couldn't do."

Abel Meeropol died in 1986. His sons, Robert and Michael, both became college professors. They're also both involved in social issues. Robert founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children. And he says that even after all these years, he still finds himself unable to kill things in his own garden.

NPR

Billie Holiday / Strange fruit

Billie Holiday

‘Strange fruit’

by Abel Meeropol / Lewis Allan

Southern trees bear strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

"A magic song from a magic voice"

Abel Meeropol (February 10, 1903 – October 30, 1986) was an American writer, teacher and song-writer, whose works were published under his pseudonym Lewis Allan. His best-known song is "Strange Fruit" (1937), especially as recorded by Billie Holiday.

Meeropol wrote the anti-lynching poem "Strange Fruit" (1937), which was first published in the Marxist publication, The New Masses.He later set it to music. The song's best-known recordings and performances were by Billie Holiday and Josh White. Billie Holiday claimed in Lady Sings the Blues, that she co-wrote the music to the song with Meeropol and Sonny White, but Meeropol was the sole writer of both the lyrics and melody.

Meeropol wrote countless poems and songs, including the Frank Sinatra and Josh White hit, "The House I Live In." He also wrote the libretto of Robert Kurka's opera, The Good Soldier Schweik (1957), which was premiered in 1958 by the New York City Opera.

Meeropol published his work under the pseudonym of "Lewis Allan," in memory of the names of his two stillborn children. Later, he and his wife Anne adopted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's two sons, Michael and Robert, who were orphaned after their parents' executions. Michael and Robert took the Meeropol surname.

According to son Robert Meeropol, the songs "Strange Fruit", "The House I Live In," and the Peggy Lee hit "Apples, Peaches and Cherries," provided most of the royalty income of the family. "Apples, Peaches and Cherries" was translated into French by Sacha Distel (French singer and sometime boyfriend of Brigitte Bardot) and has been especially popular. It became the number one hit in France under the title "Scoubidou." The song in France still earns royalties for Michael and Robert Meeropol. Abel Meeropol filed a copyright infringement lawsuit over Distel's plagiarism, as at first he claimed the song as his. After the case was settled, Meeropol started receiving the royalties.

Meeropol was born in The Bronx, New York City. He died on October 30, 1986, at the Jewish Nursing Home in Longmeadow, Massachusetts.

WIKIPEDIA