The story behind puzzle No. 25
Billie Holiday · Single · Commodore · 1939
Strange Fruit is not easy listening. It is a song about lynching, and when Billie Holiday recorded it in 1939, her record company would not touch it.
Abel Meeropol, writing under the name Lewis Allan, wrote it as a poem after seeing Lawrence Beitler's photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. He published it in 1937.
Holiday performed it at Café Society, an integrated New York nightclub. The owner made it the last song of every set. Waiters stopped serving, the room went dark except for a spotlight on her face, and there was no encore.
Columbia, Holiday's label, refused to record it, fearing the reaction from Southern retailers and its radio network. Milt Gabler of Commodore Records heard her sing it and agreed to produce it. She recorded it on April 20, 1939.
It eventually sold a million copies, her best-selling record. Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun called it a declaration of war and the beginning of the civil rights movement.
Who's on it
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For more on the song's history, look for the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry entry, where it was added in 2002.
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