Also American

Person · 1915–1959

Billie Holiday

The incomparable jazz singer whose phrasing turned every song into a confession, and whose "Strange Fruit" indicted lynching.

A defining voice of [[jazz]] and protest.

"Lady Day" sang with an emotional depth no one has matched, bending time and tone around a lyric. In 1939 she recorded "Strange Fruit," a haunting protest against lynching that became one of the most powerful songs in American history.

Jazz

On the timeline

  1. April 20, 1939
    Billie Holiday Records Strange Fruit

    After Columbia refused the song, Holiday recorded Abel Meeropol's anti-lynching poem for Commodore Records on April 20, 1939. She performed it at Café Society in New York, insisting the room go silent, making it the closing number every night. Time magazine later named it Song of the Century.

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