Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song by David Margolick, Hilton Als ISBN: 0-06-095956-8 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 23 January, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Red diaper tale
Comment: The book has an introduction by Hilton Als. In early 1939 Billie Holiday sang "Strange Fruit." It made the audience nervous. Someone clapped and then everyone clapped at the night club, Cafe Society.
Billie Holiday performed the song countless times. The song encountered great resistance. It was banned by South African Radio during the existence of apartheid. The song was written by a white Jewish school teacher from New York City, Abel Meeropol, writing under the pen name Lewis Allan. He is better known as the adoptive father of the sons of the Rosenbergs. He brought the song to Billie Holiday.
Billie Holiday embellished things in her ghost-written autobiography. Cafe Society was the brainchild of Barney Josephson. Meeropol felt that Billie Holiday was not comfortable with the song. Josh White also performed the song.
Lynching was a conspicuous theme in black fiction, theater, and art, but not in music. Lynching brutalized feelings everywhere. The U.S. Congress refused over and over again to pass an anti-lynching law. The performance on record is elegant and understated. There was a sense of inherent drama in a Billie Holiday presentation. The record sold ten thousand copies the first week by some accounts. The song made one sit up and listen and think. Hearing the record was an epic event for the fifteen year old Ned Rorem.
The title of the song was used by Lillian Smith for her anti-segregation novel. When Billie Holiday moved to the other jazz clubs "Strange Fruit" went over well. The book is part oral history. The collage style is effective. When Billie Holiday was depressed she added "Strange Fruit" to the program.
In the American mainstream "Strange Fruit" was too sensitve to sing. The song made its way into a song book used by Pete Seeger and other folk singers. The song was learned by a number of the red diaper bablies of the 1950's era. Nina Simone performed the song in the 1960's. The book contains a 'Strange Fruit" discography.
Rating: 5
Summary: Elegant Portrait
Comment: This book is an elegant portrait of a song, the woman who sang it, and the man who wrote it. It is a poignant look at the interplay between them all.I am not a student of jazz, and yet I found this book to be fascinating. It is as much about civil rights and human dignity as it is about music. Margolick is an amazingly astute observer of events, and he has an uncanny ability to describe what he sees in beautiful, elegant prose. This book would make a wonderful gift to anyone interested in jazz; interested in the civil rights movement; interested in Billie Holiday; or just interested in a little known profile in courage. Read it and savor it!
Rating: 3
Summary: Tracking a legend
Comment: There are few songs in the world that stop you in your tracks and render you speechless of mind and heart. Billie Holiday sang one of them. The combination of her signature smoky vocals and the stark lyrics of the song written by Abel Meeropol, a white Jewish schoolteacher in the Bronx, proved to be spellbinding. Its emotional charge stirred activists and intellectuals and even popular notoriety. Margolick's biography of the song is a slim volume but full of interest, well-written and researched.
 |
Title: Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights by David Margolick ISBN: 0762406771 Publisher: Running Press Book Publishers Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
 |
Title: Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon by Donald Clarke ISBN: 0306811367 Publisher: Da Capo Press Pub. Date: 18 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
 |
Title:Strange Fruit ASIN: B00002DDJ3 Publisher: Bcd Pub. Date: 27 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.99 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $15.99 |
 |
Title: Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis ISBN: 0679771263 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
 |
Title: Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday by Robert O'Meally ISBN: 0306809591 Publisher: Da Capo Press Pub. Date: 21 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
