Strange Fruit
Strange Fruit (2002)
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.
This haunting, poignant California Newsreel documentary focuses on the song Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday’s role in launching it in 1939, and the calumny of lynching which was, at the time, a subject that many whites cared not to acknowledge and many blacks dared not discuss openly.
That an American Jew wrote such a powerful assault on lynching reflected a commonality back then between Jews and African Americans in their desire for racial equality. Strange Fruit was a dramatic assault on the silence that had surrounded the lynching of countless thousands of African Americans, as well as a number of Jews. Billie Holiday first sang the song in New York City’s first non-Harlem integrated night club. Though radio stations refused to play it, Strange Fruit swiftly rose on the list of best-selling records.
At a Congressional hearing in 1940, the lyrics were read into the record. Despite numerous anti-lynching bills, none were passed because of Southern opposition and President Roosevelt’s reticence to make this an overriding political priority.
Strange Fruit initially raised public awareness of the grotesqueness and savagery of a lynching tradition in which blacks often were killed at popular gatherings, and the murderers were never indicted. Some of the artists associated with the song subsequently were caught up in anti-Communist witch hunts of the 1940s and 1950s.
While Strange Fruit was not used in the forefront of the civil rights movement, it experienced a revival in later years both in the United States and in England. Recently it has become a discussion subject in high school and college courses.
Strange Fruit author Abel Meeropol (Lewis Allan), a long-time Bronx public school teacher, was both a poet and a song writer. His deep anger was reflected in the song’s lyrics. He also wrote The House We Live In, a song made famous by Frank Sinatra in 1945, though Sinatra omitted the phrase “neighbors white and black.” Meeropol, after the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, adopted the Rosenberg’s two sons.
Strange Fruit has been song by a diversity of performers, from Pete Seeger, Diana Ross, and Ella Fitzgerald to Sting and UB-40. Diana Ross as Billie Holiday, in Lady Sings the Blues (1972), exposed a national audience to Strange Fruit. Pete Seeger, in discussing Strange Fruit, said that “A song is a triumph of simplification …..Singing a song can be a reaffirmation.”
That’s Entertainment(1974) For decades MGM was known as ‘the” musical studio. This is a selection of MGM’s best, from Bixby to Kelly, Astaire, Crosby, and Sinatra. There are also some amusing attempts to transform into musical stars such amateurs as James Stewart and Clark Gable. The film concludes with the ballet scene from American in Paris, which many consider the apex of the MGM musical era.
The Surf Ballroom(1999) This documentary profiles the saga of a notable ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, long a source of regional enjoyment and pride. It shows us a mix of urban and rural Iowans in settings where they share common tastes. Most famous as the last venue for Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. Robertson in 1957 before their fatal plane crash, it had earlier hosted leading groups from the big band era including Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Woody Hermann, Tommie Dorsey, and Glenn Miller. The Surf's history also illustrates a valiant struggle to maintain live, local music in the age of mega-shows by superstars--despite bankruptcies, fires, and wrecking balls.
Marty Knepper Morningside College knepper@morningside.edu & John Shelton Lawrence Morningside College j.shelton.1@gmail.com
