Billie Holiday is considered to be one of the best jazz vocalists of all time. She made her first two recordings, Your Mother’s Son in Law, and Riffin the Scotch when she was just 18 and over the years she performed with Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Wilson, Artie Shaw among others.

She is probably most well known though for the song Strange Fruit. Starting in 1939 she sang it at the end of her sets at Cafe Society in Greenwich Village. She performed the song in complete silence (even the waiters were required to stop service) in a dark room with only a spotlight on her face. The song is based on a poem written by a Jewish-American teacher to protest lynchings. The language is incredibly evocative and Holiday brought it to life. Black Americans at the time did not have the same rights as Whites. Segregation and Jim Crow laws meant that Black folks lived almost in a parallel universe with low wages, substandard housing, and very little protection under the law. For a Black woman to sing a song condemning racial violence at that time was incredibly brave. And Holiday continued to sing Strange Fruit until the end of her life in 1959 even though it made her a target. 

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