Customer Reviews

Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, And An Early Cry For Civil Rights

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I came to this book from references made to the song in "Without Sanctuary". I also recall references in "The Debt", and "The Unsteady March".

The title of this review only reflects a need to absorb what I have read, and also to take a pause. This subject is so grim it almost defies imagining. Even the song "Strange Fruit" stops everything when it is sung, causes controversy to this day, and has only been attempted by a handful of singers in it's 60 year history.

Mr. Margolick imparts a great deal of information in what is a brief work. It cannot be complete, but it is outstanding for what he does shed light on. Ms. Holliday had a very complex and tragic life, but was certainly loved by virtually all who knew her. She died quite young and the causes are all there for the reader to measure.

There is always some bit of fascinating human irony that comes with a story such as this. The quote that follows is from the book.

"Khallil Abdul Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan's notoriously anti-Semitic disciple and maestro of the "Million Man March", has quoted it (the song) in his speeches assailing American racism-unaware, apparently, that the song was written by a white Jewish school-teacher from New York City".

I mean no offense to anyone by highlighting that quote. For me it is another example of the root causes of the racial problems we face. We fear what we don't know, and we often don't take the time to learn the truth, and prevent our fear.

A great book, should be a part of your Civil Rights library and all libraries for that matter.

It's rare that a nonfiction book can move me to tears the way Strange Fruit has done. But the story is so compelling, and the tragedies it describes--both of Billie Holiday's life and of reaction to the horrific lynchings that were once commonplace in parts of America--are beautifully balanced by the hopefulness of the song's continued popularity. Indeed, it is a kind of miracle that the song exists at all. I found it fascinating to read about the world of Cafe Society, and to learn more about this period of American social history. I believe Strange Fruit is also an important book because of the subject it addresses--albeit in a stylish and entertaining way. Oprah should put this in her book club so it receives the wide audience it deserves. After all, it's not as if racism is a thing of the past in America.

This thought-provoking and well-researched book moves beyond the racism and anti-Semitism that have fueled myths, misconceptions, and inaccuracies about its subject for years. Unfortunately, we see many of those those inaccuracies lingering still in a number of popular forums. Do not be duped; read for yourself and learn the truth:

1) Lewis Allan is a PSEUDONYM for Abel Meeropol, a well-known and well-regarded high school English teacher and composer. He also wrote "The House I Live In" (music by Earl Robinson) which Frank Sinatra later made famous. Allan and Meeropol are THE SAME PERSON.

2) Meeropol and his wife LEGALLY adopted the Rosenberg children after their parents were executed and remained their legal guardians ever since. Both Rosenberg sons, Robert and Michael (who use the last name Meeropol) love and revere the Meeropols and consider them their parents.

3) The money to support the Rosenberg children was not raised by the Meeropols, but by a foundation, whose trustees included Shirley Graham Dubois, wife of civil rights activist W.E.B. DuBois. The foundation existed PRIOR to the Meeropols' adoption of the children.

David Margolick, a well published writer and journalist, has gathered the threads of an amazing story in STRANGE FRUIT. He deftly weaves together a sort biography of Billie Holiday, that gifted and troubled singer, with the story of her most famous song, a disturbing reference to the lynching of African Americans in the early 20th Century South. While many others recorded STRANGE FRUIT (a handy discography is included at book's end), Billie's moving version has remained the standard. The author also goes into the story of Lewis Allan, aka Abel Meeropol, the song's author and political maverick. Margolick draws upon a wide array of documentary sources and interviews to capture the song's and singer's dynamics, including numerous quotes and also a smattering of photos. I was thoroughly informed and impressed, as will be all readers.

It may seem odd to devote an entire book to a single song, but if ever a song demanded such an exploration, itÕs Billie HolidayÕs recording of Strange Fruit. Almost everyone thinks itÕs brilliant, yet few people listen to it often. Holiday makes this depiction of a lynching so real that the song is physically painful to listen to. To this day, itÕs rarely played on jazz-formatted radio stations. ItÕs too disturbing. IÕve always wondered how Billie Holiday managed to get it recorded in 1939. Did radio stations play it? And where did she sing it? I simply could not imagine Lady Day, with a gardenia in her hair, singing such a horrifying song to people in a nightclub while they sipped martinis. And if she did, how did her audience react? The fascinating thing about this book is that it not only answered my questions, it also raised many issues I hadnÕt thought about. David Margolick has collected comments and anecdotes about Strange Fruit and HolidayÕs performance from a wide variety of sources Š musicians who worked with her, people who saw her perform the song at different time in her life, and contemporary singers who have recorded the song or performed it. What they say raises a lot of interesting questions about the relationship between art and politics, as well as the relationship between an artist and her art. The most fascinating Š and shocking Š thing to me was the number of people who worked with Billie Holiday who insist that her performance was a fluke, that she did not understand what she was singing. She was an uneducated, not terribly intelligent woman, her "friends" say, and didnÕt even know the meaning of the songÕs words. To anyone who has ever heard the song, that suggestion seems insane. The words are powerful, but it is what Billie Holiday does with them that makes this the most disturbing recording ever made. It is clearly a song with a deep, personal meaning for her. In the end, after reading the book, and hearing about how she performed the song throughout her life (sometimes sharing it with an audience she thought would be sympathetic, but just as often using it as a slap in the face to an audience she felt did not respect her), you canÕt help but see that what makes HolidayÕs recording so personal, so deep, is that for her it wasnÕt only a song about lynching, it was a protest against all kinds of racism, including the racism of dismissing a brilliant artist as one more empty-headed "girl singer." Margolick makes a strong case that it was the first cry of the civil rights movement that began more than a decade later.

Reading David Margolick's book was a fascinating and intensely visceral experience. The writing evokes the subject, as if the book were a lyrical score telling the story behind Meeropol's political poetry that became Holiday's song. The author transports you to a searing episode from our past that still smolders today. I was grateful to have found and read Strange Fruit and it is powerfully imprinted in my memory.

This short book is a neat introduction to the world of 1940's jazz and Billie Holiday. It is brief enough so that you could probably finish it on the way to work. Billie Holiday has not yet been captured effectively in a full length biography, but this book is a step in the right direction. Margolick does not try to delve very deeply into Billie Holiday's artistry or her difficulties as a black woman trying to make it in a white-dominated world, but he hits some interesting highlights. If you like this, your next stop might be Angela Davis' Blues Legacies.

STRANGE FRUIT, caught my eye, as soon as I walked into the the bookstore, the cover, the title and subtitle hit me right away. I bought the book one day and finished reading it the next day. I liked it, because it was well-written, the subject matter is of interest,and I think that all too often this kind of material has been kept from the American public, for many reasons, one of which is that people do not want to be reminded about America's past history, especially its not so good. They might even call this revisionist, but how can you revive what has not been told, and how can you call it revisionist, when it is real, the truth, and not a changing of anything, but simply bringing it out of the closet and not keeping it hidden, just to perpetuate a rosy picture of America, while denying the not so rosy part of American history. This book needs to gotten out to more. We must learn to live with and accept our past, both good and bad and build upon it. Many aspects of life, depicted in this book, are still with us, and that is wrong.

Rather than review David Margolick's succinct tour de force of reporting and writing in my words, let me share some excerpts of it in his:

"White's version of "Strange Fruit" is intense, almost febrile, but it is less searing and subtle than Holiday's. "When Josh sings it, you feel you're hearing a great performance," said White's biographer, Elijah Wald. "When Billie sings it, you feel as if you're at the foot of the tree."

"Decades later, the experience of listening to, and watching, Billie Holiday perform "Strange Fruit," her eyes closed and head back, the familiar gardenia over her ear, her ruby lipstick magnifying her mocha complexion, her fingers snapping lightly, her hands holding the microphone stand as if it were a tea cup -- lingered in many memories."

When Billie sang it, "the apartment became a cathedral."

"That was all she sang; nobody asked her to sing anything else. There was a finality about the last note. Even the pianist knew. He just got up and walked away."

The reader will not just get up and walk away from this book. You will find yourself compelled to read and hear echoing every word of this strange and bitter account of a beautiful woman and a terrifying song, and how they combine with the beautiful and terrifying thing that was America and its race relations at mid-century.

David Margolick spent much of his career providing colorful accounts of that grayist of American tribes, the lawyers, for the gray New York Times. In moving to the pastels of plenty at Vanity Fair, he has richer subjects, and none with greater depth than this lady and these blues and the lost world made alive again in this book.

How was lynching ever respectable? Why did nightclub owners discourage Billie Holiday from singing this protest song against the murder of innocent Blacks? How did this powerful, somber song become Time Magazine's Best Song of the Century?

David Margolick traces the history of Strange Fruit from a forbidden, banned song to a celebrated cry for civil rights in a concise style. Performers, club owners, reviewers, and activists are extensively quoted - and the differing perceptions allowed to exist next to each other without comment.

This facinating book should be carried in all public school libraries, read in courses on American music. It's a fine addition to the scholarship on the civil rights movement too.

I do have, however, one serious criticism. Somehow, even if in just a single sentence, Margolick should have noted the irony of sensitive, gentle progressive defending Stalin's regime. Several key people, great souls, involved in the early civil rights movement - including the songwriter of Strange Fruit - were members of the Communist Party during the Stalin's dictatorship. They were outraged at the lack of freedom for blacks in America, and their criticisms of Jim Crowe laws were totally accurate. I wish, however, that Margolick had at least mentioned - once - their blindness toward the brutal rule of Stalin in the USSR.
The vast, vast majority of these progressive activists recognized their mistake, and their committment to the Bill of Rights and individual freedom only increased.

Despite this minor criticism, this is a fantastic book that documents the great change in American cultural norms over the last 50 years.It's hard to imagine a time when Billie Holiday and Strange Fruit would be banned and lynching accepted as a Southern tradition.

Thank God for progress!