[78-L] Strange Fruit (was: Billie)

[agp]

As I was digging out my copy of Strange Fruit just now, I got to 
wondering about some facts about it.

Is it safe to say that it probably didn't get much if any radio play 
or exposure then, and probably still doesn't.

I know that it has seen re-releases, I have a 45 of it on Atlantic. 
Plus, it was reissued on CD via GRP via Universal/ Verve. Don't 
really know of any re-releases as single though apart from the one on Atlantic.

Did it see release outside the USA back in the 30s? I wonder if 
anyone like Decca in the UK or HMV was brave enough to pick it up -- 
or if it wasn't even offered to them!

Finally -- on the subject of covers of it, I see that Tori Amos did 
it as the b-side to her single Cornflake Girl. This is exactly what I 
mean by saying that no one should even attempt to cover this song. 
What the foo does Tori Amos, who I'll term as a rich white neurotic 
from Baltimore, know about the emotions that are in this song. 
Academics say that -quote- Amos, by prolonging the emotional climax 
of the song to "linger in her outcry," recasts the event as an act of 
remembering and retelling, freed from the emotional constraints of 
the act of witnessing. -unquote-  (quote from Lori Burns, and Alyssa 
Woods, in "Authenticity, Appropriation, Signification: Tori Amos on 
Gender, Race, and Violence in Covers of Billie Holiday and Eminem".). 
Sounds like hogwash to me -- I think that someone out to put their 
head in a bucket of water!

T