Sold Date: July 14, 2017
Start Date: July 7, 2017
Final Price: $32.00 (USD)
Bid Count: 13
Seller Feedback: 4631
Buyer Feedback: 88

"Strange Fruit" b/w "Fine and Mellow" by Billie Holiday. Recorded April 20, 1939 and issued on Commodore 526. Condition is E. Splendid copy. Commodore pressings of this disc were recorded low, so there is some inherent surface noise. “Strange Fruit” is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. Written by a white, Jewish high school teacher from the Bronx and a member of the Communist Party, Abel Meeropol wrote it as a protest poem, exposing American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had occurred chiefly in the South but also in other regions of the United States. Meeropol set it to music and with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan, performed it as a protest song in New York venues, including at Madison Square Garden.

In 1978 Holiday’s version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[4] It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.