Holiday’s singing and recording of “Strange Fruit” in 1939 was a cultural event that raised the political consciousness of musicians and their community—a consciousness that would hit its high-water mark with Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On?” “When Holiday recorded it,” the drummer Max Roach said, “it was more than revolutionary.” Meeropol said Holiday “gave a startling, most dramatic and effective interpretation . . . which could jolt an audience out of its complacency anywhere. . . . Billie Holiday’s styling of the song was incomparable and filled with
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