here is a strange and bitter crop

[SwampG8r]

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
Blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
The scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
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

abel meeropol

[murielm99]

1. Lady Day,

one of my all time favorite singers.

[SwampG8r]

3. we got a tiny college station

low power signal high power sound
driving home tonight going over the bridge
moon shining on the still water and there she was again
she started on the radio but by the time i hit the second bridge she was there in full beside me
caressing me with her pain and giving me succor through her suffering

[murielm99]

5. They do that...

all good blues singers caress us with their pain and give us succor through their suffering.

Maybe all musicians do that. Think of "Killing Me Softly With His Song." Don McLean gets to people.

My daughter is a musician. I know her music affects me. I remember a critic describing one of her flute solos as "dangerously languid." It was. She was thrilled.

[Ecumenist]

2. Amen, I posted part of this song a bit over a week ago because it reminded me

of a modern day lynching.

[arthritisR_US]

4. Poignant, thank you :)

[The Midway Rebel]

6. Here...

also

contemoprary

[starroute]

7. Abel Meeropol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Meeropol

Meeropol wrote the anti-lynching poem, "Strange Fruit", which was first published in the Marxist publication The New Masses and was subsequently set to music. The song's best known recordings and performances were by Billie Holiday and Josh White. Billie Holiday claimed in Lady Sings the Blues, that she cowrote the music to the song with Meeropol and Sonny White, but in fact, Meeropol was the sole writer of both lyrics and melody to this haunting plea for civil rights.

Meeropol was the writer of countless poems and songs, including the Frank Sinatra and Josh White hit "The House I Live In" and the libretto of Robert Kurka's opera "The Good Soldier Schweik". Meeropol chose to write as "Lewis Allan" in memory of the names of his two stillborn children. Later, he and his wife Anne adopted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's two sons, Michael and Robert, after their parents' executions. Michael and Robert took the Meeropol surname.