With Shaw’s band, she became one of the first black women to work with a white orchestra. She also had a number of popular songs by then, dating to 1933 and one of her first recordings, “Riffin the Scotch,” which she recorded with Benny Goodman. In 1939, blues and jazz singer Billie Holiday performed at a New York city night spot called Café Society. The song she sang that evening was unlike any other that had come before it. “Strange Fruit” was its title, and the lyrics, which appear below, described the lynching of black people, a savage practice which had, at the time, continued to occur in several areas of the U.S. “Strange Fruit” was not popular fare, but eventually, with Billie Holiday’s voice and presence, it permeated mainstream culture in an unsettling way, becoming a song of protest and a song that got attention.īillie Holiday by 1939 was a known singer in the New York jazz scene who had done brief stints as a big band vocalist with Count Basie in 1937 and Artie Shaw in 1938. Billie Holiday, jazz singer, circa 1930s.
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