Billie Holiday performing “Strange Fruit” at Café Society, the first integrated nightclub in New York 1939
The song protests the lynching of Black Americans, with lyrics that compare the victims to the fruit of trees. Her 1939 rendition of this song was included in the US National Recording Registry in 2003.
She was under exclusive contract to Columbia Records at the time, and she approached them with the song…and they refused to record or publish it. Her personal producer also refused to have anything to do with recording it. They didn’t want Southern white people to boycott their label.
Presumably to keep Holiday from getting upset with them, Columbia did release her from her contract for one single recording session with another label (Commodore), and allowed them to distribute it. They just didn’t want it to say Columbia on the label.
