Billie Holiday performing "Strange Fruit" on a live televison Kinescope broadcast in 1959. The song was originally written as a poem and later set to music by Abel Meeropol, an English teacher at DeWitt Clinton in the Bronx.

The song was recorded on the Commodore label by Milt Gabler after John Hammond at Columbia, Holiday's recording label, refused to record it. Sonny White, who plays piano on the recording, was asked to improvise an introduction as Gabler feared the song was too short.¹

Holiday feared retaliation for performing the song and that singing it reminded her of the death of her father who was refused medical treatment for a fatal lung condition because of rascism. It is alleged by writer Johann Hari that the FBI targeted Holiday for performing the song and that she was framed into buying heroine serving an 18 month prison sentence and losing her cabaret performing license.²

The song was highly regarded; the 1939 recording eventually sold a million copies, in time becoming Holiday's biggest-selling recording.

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
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
The scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then 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 the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

Composed by Abel Meeropol (aka Lewis Allan)

¹Wikipedia: Strange Fruit
² How Strange Fruit Killed Billie Holiday