THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.
624-Billie Holiday-Strange Fruit.
1939-Has never charted, there was no UK chart until 1952.
Best Bit-At 0.20.’The Lady Sings The Blues.’
The lyrics were written as a poem in 1937 by a white,Jewish schoolteacher and union activist from New York City named Abel Meeropol,who was outraged after seeing a photograph of a horrific lynching in a civil rights magazine.The photo was a shot of two black men hanging from a tree after they had been lynched in Marion,Indiana,the two men are the ‘Strange Fruit.’
In 1939 while a performer at the first integrated venue in New York the ‘Cafe Society’ nightclub,the song was brought to the attention of Billie Holliday.As a performer this song was always the one she would finish on for the rest of her career.In 1999 ‘Time’ magazine voted this the ‘Song Of The Century.When the song first came out it was denounced by the same magazine as ‘A piece of musical propaganda.’
‘Here is a strange and bitter crop.’
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