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Harlem Renaissance

Billie Holiday's Career

Billie Holiday, often penniless, began singing for tips in Harlem nightclubs in the 1930s. As her talent became more widely known, she was often referred to as "Lady Day."

One of the songs for which she is famous, "Strange Fruit" a poem written by Lewis Allan, is about lynching African Americans and makes a strong statement about the horrors of racism. At first, Holiday was afraid to sing it because she worried about how white people would react. When she presented the idea of recording the song to her record company, they refused. Finally, she found another record label to record this powerful song.

Lynching of a Woman - 1911

"Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood on the root,

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

Watch and hear Holiday sing "Strange Fruit" on YouTube.

Lady Day

MetroLyricslists 307 songs for "Billie Holiday." Her best-known songs are "God Bless the Child," which she co-authored, and "Strange Fruit," for which she co-wrote the musical arrangement. In her songs and in her life, she "carried within herself the centuries-old grief of her people" (Terkel 131).

By the end of her career (and her life), she had traveled to Europe several times and had appeared on television. She is often referred to as a "torch-singer," a woman who sings in a bluesy, jazzy, sultry style. In 1959, Billie Holiday died young, at the age of 44, due to the effects of alcohol and drugs.