Song by Song: "Strange Fruit" Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1939

The song was first released in 1939 as a single with "Fine and Mellow" on the B-Side. The song was produced by Milt Gabler for Commodore Records, an independent label known for producing Dixieland jazz and swing records.

Answer: Billie Holiday

Although the African-American vocalist Laura Duncan performed "Strange Fruit" live in the late 1930s in various venues throughout New York City, including Madison Square Garden, it was first recorded by Billie Holiday on April 10, 1939 and released as a single shortly thereafter. Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1915 and nicknamed "Lady Day" by Lester Young, her music partner.

She was an influential figure in both jazz music and pop singing.

Answer: The lynching of black Americans

A total of 3,466 blacks and 1,297 whites were lynched between 1882 and 1968 according to the Tuskegee Institute. The practice peaked at the turn of the 20th century. In the song, the victims of lynchings are compared to the fruit of trees. Record producer Ahmet Ertegun called the song "a declaration of war" and "the beginning of the civil rights movement."

Answer: Abel Meeropol

Abel Meeropol, an American songwriter born in 1903 to Russian immigrant parents in New York City, wrote a poem called "Bitter Fruit" under the pseudonym of Lewis Allan. Meeropol's poem was inspired by his horrified reaction to Lawrence Beitler's photograph of a 1930 lynching in Marion, Indiana.

He later renamed it "Strange Fruit" and set it to music. For seventeen years, Meeropol was an English teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School, where he taught James Baldwin and Countee Cullen, both prominent writers during the Harlem Renaissance.

Answer: Ranked number five on Rolling Stone magazine's "Greatest Songs of All Time" list

Billie Holiday's version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978, and the Library of Congress selected it for inclusion in the National Recording Registry on January 27, 2003. It was in 1999 that Time magazine named it the "Best Song of the Century." It was also ranked number seven on Mojo magazine's list of the greatest songs, but it was not included in the top ten on Rolling Stone's list.

Answer: blood

The blood of the beaten and lynched men drip on the leaves and roots of the trees.

Jeff Buckley covered "Strange Fruit" in 1993. Lara Pellegrinelli wrote for NPR Music that in his bluesy cover, Buckley's vocals "in creating textures that feel more mystical than real" manage to "meditate on the meaning of humanity the way Walt Whitman did, considering all of its glorious and horrifying possibilities."

Answer: poplar

"Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze.
Strange fruit hanging form the poplar trees."
 
Because they thrive in warm weather and moist soil, poplar trees grow abundantly in the American South. Varieties consists of eastern, Lombardy, balsam, and white poplar.

Answer: magnolia

"Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh."

The magnolia is known for its strong, sweet scent, and magnolia trees are common throughout the American South.

"Strange Fruit" has been covered by artists ranging from René Marie and Josh White to Bettye LaVette and Edward W. Hardy.

Answer: The crows

"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."

In this stanza is a horrifying image of dead, hanging bodies plucked by hungry, scavenging crows. The bodies remain swinging from the trees in the hot southern sun, which rots them until they finally drop from their nooses, a "strange and bitter crop."

Answer: Nina Simone

The song was included on the album "Patel Blues," which was released by Phillip Records in 1965 and peaked at 138 on the U.S. Billboard 200 Albums Chart. The album reached number eight on the R&B Albums chart. Lara Pellegrinelli wrote for NPR Music that Nina Simone dramatized the song "in the context of the Civil Rights movement. Simone starts her reading of the song in a voice that sounds brutally plain and unsentimental, as if the words themselves had been blanched by sun."