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Red diaper tale
Elegant Portrait
Tracking a legend
Strange Fruit, like Billie Holiday's Song, Moved Me!
STRANGE FRUIT is no more than an appetizer

Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song
David Margolick , and Hilton Als
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Strange Fruit
Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights

ASIN: 0060959568
Release Date: 2001-01-23

Book Description

Recorded by jazz legend Billie Holiday in 1939, "Strange Fruit" is considered to be the first significant song of the civil rights movement and the first direct musical assault upon racial lynchings in the South. Originally sung in New York's Cafe Society, these revolutionary lyrics take on a life of their own in this revealing account of the song and the struggle it personified. Strange Fruit not only chronicles the civil rights movement from the '30s on, it examines the lives of the beleaguered Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, the white Jewish schoolteacher and communist sympathizer who wrote the song that would have an impact on generations of fans, black and white, unknown and famous, including performers Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, and Sting.

Customer Reviews:

Red diaper tale.......2004-02-11

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 babies of the 1950's era. Nina Simone performed the song in the 1960's. The book contains a 'Strange Fruit" discography.

Elegant Portrait.......2002-08-02

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!

Tracking a legend.......2001-06-26

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.

Strange Fruit, like Billie Holiday's Song, Moved Me!.......2001-03-04

Strange Fruit : The Biography of a Song by David Margolick, Hilton Als, moved me! I think Margolick did a great job of ferreting out and marrying an extensive array of first person accounts of people's experiences listening to Billie Holiday sing her heartbreaking ballad, enough so that I almost felt like I was there too at times! Margolick doesn't pretend his book is a historical analysis - it's a biography, and a short one at that. As such, it does it's job and will resonate with me, as does Billie's song. It would be to the historians that I would look for analysis of its effects on society - anyone listening? The book adds another layer of fine patina to an historical moment in musical history and illustrates how brave Billie Holiday must have been!

STRANGE FRUIT is no more than an appetizer.......2001-02-15

I was glad to see the announcement for this book, an essay on Billie Holiday's landmark song, "Strange Fruit." Margolick does a good job of describing the song's origins, its performance by Holiday and its initial reception by audiences and critics.

Unfortunately, there is little analysis of the song's impact on the African-American community or on American society in general. While the narrative is presented well, the commentary is often superficial: "Some African Americans...disliked the song because it portrayed blacks as victims. Others literally feared the song, thinking that far from enlightening people, it would stir up racial hatreds and actually lead to a new wave of lynchings." But which of the many views was dominant? Margolick provides some educated guesses but no real evidence. We see how the song affected particular individuals but not how it influenced the cause of civil rights.

Moreover, the purpose and scope of the book are never made clear. As a biographical essay, STRANGE FRUIT omits much of the context we would need to understand Holiday and her life. As a social commentary, it fails to marshal evidence in a cogent or convincing way. The author presents no critical evaluation of the song itself, and the book is ultimately more a tribute than anything else.

The unusual length of the book also makes it hard to categorize. It's more than a conventional essay yet less than a full-length biography. While the comments of those who knew Holiday are generally interesting, Margolick's attempts to synthesize the material -- to make sense of it all -- often seem forced, incomplete or even contradictory.

Amazon.com

Our image of Billie Holiday is that of the elegant and melancholy jazz singer known for her haunting voice and immortal classics like "Lady Sings the Blues" and "My Man." But there was another song she performed that stood out in her repertoire: "Strange Fruit," a disturbing and impressionistic elegy to lynched black men in the South. Now, for the first time, New York Times and Vanity Fair contributor David Margolick uncovers the extraordinary history of this important American composition that few singers dare to perform to this day. For Margolick, "'Strange Fruit' defies easy musical categorization and has slipped between the cracks of academic study. It's too artsy to be folk music, too explicitly political and polemical to be jazz. Surely no song in American history has ever been guaranteed to silence an audience or to generate such discomfort."

Margolick reconstructs that discomfort when he details that fateful night in 1939 when Holiday first performed "Strange Fruit" at New York's Cafe Society. He also writes about the song's composer, Abel Meeropol (who later adopted the sons of spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg). For the author, "Strange Fruit" was a protest act on par with Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus years later, and he notes the influence the song has had on poets, singers, and writers as diverse as Maya Angelou, Cassandra Wilson, and Natalie Merchant. What David Margolick proves in this small but important book is that art can indeed move people in ways nothing else can. --Eugene Holley Jr.

Customer Reviews:

A Song of Despair that helped end lynching.......2001-12-27

How was lynching ever respectable? Why did nightclub owners discourage Billie Holiday from singing this protest song against the murder of innocent Blacks? How did this powerful, somber song become Time Magazine's Best Song of the Century?

David Margolick traces the history of Strange Fruit from a forbidden, banned song to a celebrated cry for civil rights in a concise style. Performers, club owners, reviewers, and activists are extensively quoted - and the differing perceptions allowed to exist next to each other without comment.

This facinating book should be carried in all public school libraries, read in courses on American music. It's a fine addition to the scholarship on the civil rights movement too.

I do have, however, one serious criticism. Somehow, even if in just a single sentence, Margolick should have noted the irony of sensitive, gentle progressive defending Stalin's regime. Several key people, great souls, involved in the early civil rights movement - including the songwriter of Strange Fruit - were members of the Communist Party during the Stalin's dictatorship. They were outraged at the lack of freedom for blacks in America, and their criticisms of Jim Crowe laws were totally accurate. I wish, however, that Margolick had at least mentioned - once - their blindness toward the brutal rule of Stalin in the USSR.
The vast, vast majority of these progressive activists recognized their mistake, and their committment to the Bill of Rights and individual freedom only increased.

Despite this minor criticism, this is a fantastic book that documents the great change in American cultural norms over the last 50 years.It's hard to imagine a time when Billie Holiday and Strange Fruit would be banned and lynching accepted as a Southern tradition.

Thank God for progress!

A powerful book about a powerful song........2001-08-24

It may seem odd to devote an entire book to a single song, but if ever a song demanded such an exploration, itÕs Billie HolidayÕs recording of Strange Fruit. Almost everyone thinks itÕs brilliant, yet few people listen to it often. Holiday makes this depiction of a lynching so real that the song is physically painful to listen to. To this day, itÕs rarely played on jazz-formatted radio stations. ItÕs too disturbing. IÕve always wondered how Billie Holiday managed to get it recorded in 1939. Did radio stations play it? And where did she sing it? I simply could not imagine Lady Day, with a gardenia in her hair, singing such a horrifying song to people in a nightclub while they sipped martinis. And if she did, how did her audience react? The fascinating thing about this book is that it not only answered my questions, it also raised many issues I hadnÕt thought about. David Margolick has collected comments and anecdotes about Strange Fruit and HolidayÕs performance from a wide variety of sources Ð musicians who worked with her, people who saw her perform the song at different time in her life, and contemporary singers who have recorded the song or performed it. What they say raises a lot of interesting questions about the relationship between art and politics, as well as the relationship between an artist and her art. The most fascinating Ð and shocking Ð thing to me was the number of people who worked with Billie Holiday who insist that her performance was a fluke, that she did not understand what she was singing. She was an uneducated, not terribly intelligent woman, her "friends" say, and didnÕt even know the meaning of the songÕs words. To anyone who has ever heard the song, that suggestion seems insane. The words are powerful, but it is what Billie Holiday does with them that makes this the most disturbing recording ever made. It is clearly a song with a deep, personal meaning for her. In the end, after reading the book, and hearing about how she performed the song throughout her life (sometimes sharing it with an audience she thought would be sympathetic, but just as often using it as a slap in the face to an audience she felt did not respect her), you canÕt help but see that what makes HolidayÕs recording so personal, so deep, is that for her it wasnÕt only a song about lynching, it was a protest against all kinds of racism, including the racism of dismissing a brilliant artist as one more empty-headed "girl singer." Margolick makes a strong case that it was the first cry of the civil rights movement that began more than a decade later.

an ACCURATE account.......2001-01-31

This thought-provoking and well-researched book moves beyond the racism and anti-Semitism that have fueled myths, misconceptions, and inaccuracies about its subject for years. Unfortunately, we see many of those those inaccuracies lingering still in a number of popular forums. Do not be duped; read for yourself and learn the truth:

1) Lewis Allan is a PSEUDONYM for Abel Meeropol, a well-known and well-regarded high school English teacher and composer. He also wrote "The House I Live In" (music by Earl Robinson) which Frank Sinatra later made famous. Allan and Meeropol are THE SAME PERSON.

2) Meeropol and his wife LEGALLY adopted the Rosenberg children after their parents were executed and remained their legal guardians ever since. Both Rosenberg sons, Robert and Michael (who use the last name Meeropol) love and revere the Meeropols and consider them their parents.

3) The money to support the Rosenberg children was not raised by the Meeropols, but by a foundation, whose trustees included Shirley Graham Dubois, wife of civil rights activist W.E.B. DuBois. The foundation existed PRIOR to the Meeropols' adoption of the children.

HOW COULD A SMART LAWYER WRITE SUCH A DUMB BOOK?.......2000-12-20

Stanford Law School educated lawyer David Margolick has appointed himself shyster for one of New York City's sleeziest historical figures of the 1930's and 1940's, Abel Meeropol, the guy who claimed he wrote southern author Lewis Allan's famous poem titled STRANGE FRUIT ("Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood on the root," etc.)

It's a poem about a lynched Black man put to bad music (probably by Meeropol) and made famous in torch song renditions by Billie Holliday and Eartha Kitt (and others).

The audacious Meeropol was no poet, but claimed he was, and even claimed copyright to Allan's poem. The fact is, Meeropol was a famous hustler, later noted for offering "shelter" to the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenburg and tearfully raising money to support his "cause" of "saving" the Rosenburg children (a New York judge put a stop to all this).

Mr. Margolick's book is dull and poorly written, claiming sympathy for Billie Holiday and lynched Blacks in the South, but actually dripping with Crocodile tears and cynicism.

It's amazing that a piece of crap like this could get into print, but the "Running Press" of Philadelphia has turned the trick, and offers the book for $16.95 ($25.95 in Canada). Don't buy it or read it. It's awful.

Gee Baby, Ain't Margolick Good To Us.......2000-08-08

This warm-hearted generous book captures the bittersweet beauty of Lady and all of her glory. In concise, translucent prose that sparkles, David Margolick tells of the song that forces Americans to face the stark and shared history that brings together black and white, jew and gentile. By honestly facing the wounds of racism and bigotry, prejudice and betrayal, Margolick offers a book that refuses to accept despair and embraces Lady's music as a noble expression of hope born out of pain.

Fruits Basket - Special Editions Holiday Book & DVD Box Set

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Fruits Basket - Special Editions Holiday Book & DVD Box Set
Natsuki Takaya
Manufacturer: TokyoPop
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1595327355

The Jewish Gardening Cookbook: Growing Plants and Cooking for Holidays and Festivals

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Great book!
Expert guidance on combining gardening and Jewish life.

The Jewish Gardening Cookbook: Growing Plants and Cooking for Holidays and Festivals
Michael P. Brown
Manufacturer: Jewish Lights Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1580230040

Book Description

Whether you garden in an herb garden, a city apartment windowsill or patio, or on a country acre, with the fruits and vegetables of your own gardening labors, the traditional repasts of Jewish holidays and celebrations can be understood in many new ways!

The Jewish Gardening Cookbook gives easy-to-follow instructions for raising foods that have been harvested since ancient times, such as grapes, figs, dates, and pomegranates. It also provides carefully selected, tasty, and easy-to-prepare traditional and modern recipes using these foodstuffs for holidays, festivals, and life cycle events.

While introducing us to Biblical and rabbinical references to specific foods and agricultural methods, the author firmly grounds gardening and food preparation in the celebration of traditional Jewish rituals and life cycle events, such as Shabbat, Yom Ha-Atzma'ut (Israel Independence Day), the birth of a child, and more. Home cultivation of foods is thoroughly explained--from planting to pruning to the use of your long-awaited harvest surplus.

Clearly illustrated with more than 30 fine botanical illustrations, this pro-active, creative book for beginner and professional gardener alike will inspire and bring insight into your most humble celebrations.

Customer Reviews:

Great book!.......1999-07-18

This is a great book for home gardeners who want to expand their garden to include some "jewish" plants. The book explains how each plant fits in with jewish history and customs. It also tells you how to care for the plants!

Expert guidance on combining gardening and Jewish life........1998-08-24

This book has made my wife and I excited about planting our next year's garden. The book gives easy-to-understand guidance on planting, raising, and cooking many biblical foods, and it explains how the foods relate to Jewish holidays. It's obvious the author loves to garden, and his enthusiasm comes across. The advice is expert and simple. The botanical illustrations are also very pretty. I tried one recipe so far (apple-raisin-nut cake), and it was delicious.

Fruits of the Harvest: Recipes to Celebrate Kwanzaa and Other Holidays

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Fruits of the Harvest: Recipes to Celebrate Kwanzaa and Other Holidays
Eric V. Copage
Manufacturer: Amistad
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0060833246
Release Date: 2005-10-25

Book Description

Fruits of the Harvest: Recipes to Celebrate Kwanzaa and Other Holidays offers more than 125 treasured recipes from people of African descent all over the world: Jerked Pork Chops and Fresh Papaya Chutney from Jamaica; New-Fashioned Fried Chicken, a dish from the Deep South; and Tiebou Dienne, Senegalese herb-stuffed fish steaks with seasoned rice. In addition to main courses, there are recipes for a full range of dishes, from appetizers to soups, salads, side dishes, vegetables, breads, beverages, and, of course, desserts. Fried Okra, Antiguan Pepper Pot, Ambrosia Salad and Potato Salad, Garlic-Chedder Grits Soufflé, Caipirinha, and Sweet Potato Tarts in Peanut Butter Crusts are but a few of the delights featured here.

And along the way, learn about African American culture, including the seven principles of Kwanzaa and how people of African descent all across the globe celebrate the best their cultures have to offer through food and communion. Fruits of the Harvest: Recipes to Celebrate Kwanzaa and Other Holidays isn't just a cookbook -- it's a source of inspiration for the most extravagant of holiday gatherings as well as for a simple Sunday dinner.

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Silver Folding Fruit Knives
Bill Karsten
Manufacturer: Knife World Pubns
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0940362112

Book Description

An introduction to the exquisite world of the antique fruit knife, this guide covers fruit knives and folding forks of both American and English origin, and serves as a good reference guide on this specialized subject.

Family Circle Illustrated Library of Cooking Volume 9 - Fruits - Holiday Feasts

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Family Circle Illustrated Library of Cooking Volume 9 - Fruits - Holiday Feasts
Family Circle
Manufacturer: The Family Circle, Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GLYP90

The 2006-2011 World Outlook for Holiday-Type Fruit Cakes Excluding Frozen Cakes

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The 2006-2011 World Outlook for Holiday-Type Fruit Cakes Excluding Frozen Cakes

Manufacturer: Icon Group International, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound
ASIN: 0497019892
Release Date: 2005-04-14

Book Description

WHAT IS LATENT DEMAND AND THE P.I.E.?

The concept of latent demand is rather subtle. The term latent typically refers to something that is dormant, not observable, or not yet realized. Demand is the notion of an economic quantity that a target population or market requires under different assumptions of price, quality, and distribution, among other factors. Latent demand, therefore, is commonly defined by economists as the industry earnings of a market when that market becomes accessible and attractive to serve by competing firms. It is a measure, therefore, of potential industry earnings (P.I.E.) or total revenues (not profit) if a market is served in an efficient manner. It is typically expressed as the total revenues potentially extracted by firms. The “market” is defined at a given level in the value chain. There can be latent demand at the retail level, at the wholesale level, the manufacturing level, and the raw materials level (the P.I.E. of higher levels of the value chain being always smaller than the P.I.E. of levels at lower levels of the same value chain, assuming all levels maintain minimum profitability).

The latent demand for holiday-type fruit cakes excluding frozen cakes is not actual or historic sales. Nor is latent demand future sales. In fact, latent demand can be lower either lower or higher than actual sales if a market is inefficient (i.e., not representative of relatively competitive levels). Inefficiencies arise from a number of factors, including the lack of international openness, cultural barriers to consumption, regulations, and cartel-like behavior on the part of firms. In general, however, latent demand is typically larger than actual sales in a country market.

For reasons discussed later, this report does not consider the notion of “unit quantities”, only total latent revenues (i.e., a calculation of price times quantity is never made, though one is implied). The units used in this repo

First Fruits: A family guide for celebrating Kwanza

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First Fruits: A family guide for celebrating Kwanza
Imani Abegunde Humphrey
Manufacturer: Affirmative Learning Services
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006YS6OM

The 2007-2012 Outlook for Holiday-Type Fruit Cakes Excluding Frozen Cakes in India

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The 2007-2012 Outlook for Holiday-Type Fruit Cakes Excluding Frozen Cakes in India
Philip M. Parker
Manufacturer: ICON Group International, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Econometrics | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0497480182
Release Date: 2006-09-28

Book Description

This study covers the latent demand outlook for holiday-type fruit cakes excluding frozen cakes across the states, union territories and cities of India. Latent demand (in millions of U.S. dollars), or potential industry earnings (P.I.E.) estimates are given across some 4,900 cities in India. For each city in question, the percent share the city is of it’s state or union territory and of India as a whole is reported. These comparative benchmarks allow the reader to quickly gauge a city vis-à-vis others. This statistical approach can prove very useful to distribution and/or sales force strategies. Using econometric models which project fundamental economic dynamics within each state or union territory and city, latent demand estimates are created for holiday-type fruit cakes excluding frozen cakes. This report does not discuss the specific players in the market serving the latent demand, nor specific details at the product level. The study also does not consider short-term cyclicalities that might affect realized sales. The study, therefore, is strategic in nature, taking an aggregate and long-run view, irrespective of the players or products involved.

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