|
| |
| | Interview with Robert Meeropol
by Scott Satterwhite |
 | | Abel Meeropol was a songwriter and a high school teacher who quit his job to become a full-time songwriter. | | | He is also the adopted son of songwriters Ann and Abel Meeropol. | | | Abel Meeropol wrote the classic anti-lynching anthem "Strange Fruit" made famous by Billie Holiday) |
|
http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/robertmeeropol
(6519 words)
|
|
| |
| | Strange Fruit PopMatters Television Review |
| | Abel Meeropol's place in that history, however, has been obscured by general misconceptions about the authorship of the song, as well as Holiday's own assertions in later years, including her claim that the song was written specifically for her and that she put it to music. | | | Meeropol himself scored the song and his wife Anne was the first to perform it in the late 1930s. | | | The story goes that Meeropol approached Holiday to record the song at the Café Society, the only integrated club in New York at the time. |
|
http://www.popmatters.com/tv/reviews/s/strange-fruit.shtml
(1078 words)
|
|
| |
| | Nilschweinchen's World - weblog@myblog.de |
| | Abel Meeropol is also famous for the composition ‘The house I live in’, sung by Frank Sinatra in a short oscar winning film, and for having adopted Robert and Michael Rosenberg, the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed because of espionage in 1953. | | | Initially, my term paper deals with the history of the song itself, and its composer Abel Meeropol, aka Lewis Allen, and his motives to write the lyrics. | | | There were also many singers who did not sing the song, because their simply feared performing it. |
|
http://myblog.de/nilschweinchen/page/145322
(4135 words)
|
|
| |
| | TrouserPress.com :: Mike Meeropol |
| | Taught to play guitar by his adoptive mother (whose husband, Abel Meeropol, was the songwriter responsible for "Strange Fruit"), the student folksinger recorded an album pressed and released by the school. | | | A decade after he was orphaned by the US government in 1953, Mike Meeropol — the elder of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's two sons — was an undergraduate at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, a school which happened to be extremely active in the burgeoning folk music scene. | | | At the album's most extreme, he unleashes dramatic fury on "Samson" and a colorful Irish brogue for "Finnegan's Wake." Meeropol's playing is masterful and confident throughout. |
|
http://www.trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=mike_meeropol
(261 words)
|
|
| |
| | "Strange Fruit": the story of a song |
| | Meeropol credited Holiday for her unique and influential version of the song, but he insisted on setting the record straight when Lady Sings the Blues appeared in the 1950s. | | | A prolific poet and songwriter, Meeropol was born in New York in 1903 into an immigrant family. | | | Meeropol got the song to Barney Josephson, the owner of the club, and asked if Holiday would sing it. |
|
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/feb2002/frut-f08.shtml
(2204 words)
|
|
| |
| | Strange Fruit |
| | Katz uses archival footage, horrifying documents of lynchings, still photographs and charming old reel-to-reel recordings of Meeropol entertaining his children to create his song history, but most powerful of all is the song itself. | | | Since then, the song has been performed many times and caused the lives of those involved to change, sometimes drastically, as in the case of folksinger Josh White, whose career was destroyed by the McCarthyism of the day for his performance of the protest song. | | | In 1939, singer Billy Holiday recorded these words in what would become her signature piece until the end of her all-too-brief life. |
|
http://www.reelingreviews.com/strangefruit.htm
(833 words)
|
|
| |
| | et28.rtf |
| | Meeropol also wrote the lyrics to "The House I Live In," which was made into a short film in 1945 with Frank Sinatra handling the vocals. | | | The jazz chanteuse recorded it on April 20, 1939, and radio stations banned it instantly. | | | But the Jewish schoolteacher will be forever remembered for "Strange Fruit," the haunting lyric that became jazz singer Billie Holiday's signature tune. |
|
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk030103/et28.shtml
(643 words)
|
|
| |
| | Strange Fruit : The Biography of a Song |
| | 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. | | | Meeropol felt that Billie Holiday was not comfortable with the song. | | | Lynching was a conspicuous theme in black fiction, theater, and art, but not in music. |
|
http://www.quizbox.com/resources/books/details.aspx?id=0060959568
(1051 words)
|
|
| |
| | Show-Stopper |
| | Meeropol's words as transmuted by Holiday's voice grab the listener by the throat. | | | Listening to Holiday's original recording, we understand why Grafton in 1939 and Margolick more than 60 years later were moved to write about the song and the singer. | | | What she needed help with -- and Josephson provided it -- was finding a way to get audience members to look up from their drinks and stop chatting long enough to listen to a song about a lynching. |
|
http://partners.nytimes.com/books/00/05/21/reviews/000521.21nasawt.html
(870 words)
|
|
| |
| | Abel Meeropol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| | Billie Holiday (or rather her ghostwriter) claimed, in Lady Sings the Blues, that she cowrote the music to the song with Meeropol and Sonny White, but this is inaccurate. | | | The writer of countless poems and songs, including the Sinatra hit "The House I Live In", Meeropol was also a teacher and ardent, but closeted, Communist. | | | As he and his wife, Ann, were unable to have children he took his pseudonym from the intended names of their stillborn sons. |
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Meeropol
(161 words)
|
|
| |
| | Democracy Now Transcript Archives |
| | Michael Meeropol: Well, the first night after my father was arrested I listenedÊ stayed up late listened to a radio broadcast and my father's arrest was on the radio. | | | This is Abel Meeropol's song, "Strange Fruit." [music break] | | | We're talking with Morton Sobell, codefendant of the Rosenbergs and Robert Meeropol, who is just finished a memoir called "An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey." Stay with us. |
|
http://www.democracynow.org/transcripts/rosenberg.shtml
(5193 words)
|
|
| |
| | Movie Database - [TV Guide Online] |
| | The single reached number 16 on the pop charts without radio airplay, and became so associated with Holiday that when her autobiography suggested Meeropol had written the lyrics for her, and that she and collaborator Sonny White had composed the music, it set off a controversy that persists today. | | | He even spent a few years in Hollywood, where his song "The House I Live In," a deceptively sweet vision of America living up to its egalitarian ideals, became the subject of a 1945, Oscar-winning short film starring Frank Sinatra. | | | Michael Meeropol provides a far more eloquent statement of the song's enduring impact: "Until the last racist is dead, 'Strange Fruit' is relevant." — Maitland McDonagh |
|
http://online.tvguide.com/movies/database/showmovie.asp?MI=44170
(419 words)
|
|
| |
| | [No title] |
| | It was recorded by Frank Sinatra and made into a short in 1945 that won an Academy Award. | | | Even the structure of the film evokes Meeropol's sensibility, Katz confides. | | | "Strange Fruit" will make its West Coast premiere with the short, "The House I Live In" -- another song written by Meeropol. |
|
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk020712/et28.shtml
(733 words)
|
|
| |
| | Wolf Entertainment Guide |
| | There is also disclosure of Meeropol's anger when his "The House I Live In," another famous number he wrote under Lewis Allan and recorded by Frank Sinatra, had a white-black racial harmony portion edited out in the Sinatra film short in which he sang it. | | | It is true that her performance of the song made it an anthem against lynching and accounted for its force and popularity, even though radio stations banned its playing in the racist atmosphere of the late 1930s and the 1940s (Holiday first sang "Strange Fruit" in 1939 at Barney Josephson's Café Society in Greenwich Village.) | | | For one thing, he sets the record straight. |
|
http://www.wolfentertainmentguide.com/pub/filmsearch.asp?record=1930
(459 words)
|
|
| |
| | $artist - $album |
| | The lyrics and melody were written and published by Abel Meeropol, a Bronx schoolteacher and union activist, in 1938. | | | Below is a selection of other recordings of Abel Meeropol's classic song. | | | Dozens of other artists have recorded the song as well, and folk singer Josh White's version should not be missed. |
|
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/reviews/v1102_04.htm
(1274 words)
|
|
| |
| | [No title] |
| | Meeropol, who had failed to copyright the song, learned it had been recorded only when a friend brought him a copy. | | | He ultimately got standard royalties: two cents per record, one for the words, another for the music. | | | "To be perfectly frank, I didn't think she felt very comfortable with the song, because it was so different from the songs to which she was accustomed," Meeropol later wrote. |
|
http://www.ladyday.net/stuf/vfsept98.html
(4562 words)
|
|
| |
| | A song that changed the world |
| | Written by schoolteacher Abel Meeropol, the song--an agonizingly poetic description of a Southern lynching--may be the most compelling antiracist song ever recorded. | | | In 1939, Meeropol played the song for Billie Holiday. | | | Listening to a recording of Billie Holiday sing "Strange Fruit" is an electrifying experience. |
|
http://www.socialistworker.org/2001/369/369_11_StrangeFruit.shtml
(526 words)
|
|
| |
| | words |
| | Whilst the lyrics brought her fame, Meeropol (alias Lewis Allen) was questioned by the authorities on suspecion of being a communist. | | | In the documentary 'Strange Fruit' (USA 2002) director Joel Katz displays how Meeropols lyrics became the anthem against racism, how Holliday and Meeropol disputed over who wrote the music to it and how the McCarthy-regime insisted to hinder Meeropols creative freedom. | | | 'Strange fruit' by Abel Meeropol, alias Lewis Allen |
|
http://www.klaartjejaspers.com/words.htm
(582 words)
|
|
| |
| | November 2002 blackfilm.com reviews indie strange fruit |
| | Since Meeropol never copyrighted the song, it was basically up for grabs. | | | With Holiday singing it and drawing a wide audience, mostly African Americans, the song was naturally associated with her. | | | With commentaries from Amiri Baraka, Don Byron as well as Meeropol’s sons, Katz captures their feelings towards Holiday and the song. |
|
http://www.blackfilm.com/20021108/reviews/strangefruit.shtml
(357 words)
|
|
| |
| | FORWARD : Arts & Letters |
| | Abel was a songwriter who authored two hits: the haunting anti-lynch tune "Strange Fruit" and the virtual Communist anthem "The House I Live In." | | | But Meeropol's tale of his family's tragedy is surprisingly sunny, while Feiffer's fictional characters are rent apart. | | | In line with this, in his work as the founder and director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children —ñ which supports psychotherapy, education and other needs of children of left-wing "political prisoners" — Meeropol does not consider the guilt or innocence of their parents. |
|
http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.07.18/arts4.html
(858 words)
|
|
| |
| | Articles - Ethel and Julius Rosenberg |
| | They were finally adopted by the songwriters Ann and Abel Meeropol. | | | Abel Meeropol wrote the classic anti-lynching anthem "Strange Fruit," made famous by singer Billie Holiday. | | | Michael& daughter, Ivy Meeropol, directed a 2004 documentary about her grandparents, Heir to an Execution, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival. |
|
http://www.centralairconditioners.net/articles/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg
(2076 words)
|
|
| |
| | The Guardian |
| | Abel Meeropol's other best known composition is The House I Live In, about the multi-cultural mix of the USA, sung with irony and power by Paul Robeson and with patriotic fervour by Frank Sinatra. | | | In 1939 Meeropol introduced the song to black female singer Billie Holiday. | | | The poem was set to music by Meeropol and sung by his wife Anne at Communist Party functions and other progressive gatherings. |
|
http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve03/1136cult.html
(869 words)
|
|
| |
| | Publications of the Society for American Music |
| | Published quarterly by the Society for American Music and the University of Illinois Press, and edited by Ellie M. Hisama, it is devoted to all aspects of American music and music in America. | | | Recent issues have included articles on topics as diverse as Aaron Copland, World Music in Television Ads, and early recordings of the Fisk Jubilee Singers; among forthcoming articles are discussions of Henry Cowell and modern dance, Abel Meeropol (a.k.a. |
|
http://american-music.org/publications/PublicationInformation.htm
(283 words)
|
|
| |
| | Variety.com - Reviews - Strange Fruit |
| | That honor went entirely to Abel Meeropol, using the ethnically ambiguous pen name of Lewis Allen. | | | With: Abel Meeropol, Billie Holiday, Amiri Baraka, Abbey Lincoln, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Frank Sinatra, Pete Seeger, Don Byron, Josh White Jr., Dorothy Thigpen, narrator. | | | It went on to international acclaim, with versions recorded by everyone from Josh White to UB40 and Cassandra Wilson -- generally without the benefit of radio play or record company support, making it one of the longest-running "alternative" success stories in showbiz history. |
|
http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=review&reviewid=VE1117918301&categoryid=31&cs=1
(692 words)
|
|
| |
| | [No title] |
| | After the tumultuous years spanning the Rosenberg case, Robert was adopted by Abel Meeropol- the songwriter whose anti-lynching anthem, "Strange Fruit," was made famous by Billie Holiday- and his wife, Anne. | | | ROBERT MEEROPOL has been a progressive activist, author, and public speaker for thirty years. |
|
http://www.rfc.org/Pressrelease%20Hastings.htm
(563 words)
|
|
| |
| | The Jewish Journal Of Greater Los Angeles |
| | With her recording of Abel Meeropol's song "Strange Fruit," Billie Holiday gave color and voice to the horrors of lynching. | | | Josephson gave the song to Billie Holiday, who made it indelibly her own. | | | Meeropol, a Communist who adopted the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 when they were executed as Soviet spies, first wrote the song as a poem, later setting it to music, when he saw a photograph of a horrendous lynching in a civil rights magazine. |
|
http://www.jewishjournal.com/archive/08.25.00/art.08.25.00.html
(926 words)
|
|
| |
| | Strange Fruit (2002) |
| | There is even an excerpt from "The House I Live In," an Academy Award-winning short starring Frank Sinatra and based on another of Meeropol's ballads, a film that infuriated Meeropol by excising a lyric explicitly supporting racial integration. | | | There are plenty of stills, newsreel footage, and a clip of Holiday from late in her life performing the song on British television. | | | The film also re-creates how the song came to be written and how Meeropol and Holiday were originally brought together, dispelling some of the mythology surrounding "Strange Fruit" along the way — rumors that Holiday was originally reluctant to perform the song or that she was a collaborator in its writing. |
|
http://www.reel.com/movie.asp?MID=137571&buy=closed&Tab=reviews&CID=13
(370 words)
|
|
| |
| | Discussions - View Single Post - Facing Lynchings and Ourselves (due Mon Oct 22) |
| | While I was looking for the lyrics of Abel Meeropol's song Strange Fruit, I came across a website [http://americanlynching.com/]. | | | Listening to the powerful voice of Billie Holiday is moving in itself but when it was paired up with the lyrics of Abel Meeropol's song Strange Fruit, her voice illustrates the horror and the pain the lynchings that were once common to America. | | | The fact that people at the time deemed the song too dangerous to hear only shows that they were afraid to face the subject of "Strange Fruit." Though all the controversy over the song was good in a way since it drew the attention of people to an issue that had to be addressed. |
|
http://www.learntoquestion.com/class/discussion/showpost.php?p=5421&postcount=30
(433 words)
|
|
| |
| | Strange Fruit |
| | One of Meeropol's other songs, This is America to Me, performed by Frank Sinatra, sets the tone for Meeropol's life story that is full of surprises. | | | When Bronx born teacher Abel Meeropol wrote the song Strange Fruit in 1930 about lynchings in the South, he never anticipated its Billie Holiday rendition would become an early anthem for civil rights reform. | | | Interviews with Pete Seeger and others show the scope of his work and his contributions. |
|
http://www.njjff.org/films/strangefruit.htm
(101 words)
|
|
| |
| | Zeek: The Truth about the Rosenbergs |
| | But perhaps surprisingly, Meeropol does not cling to his parents' innocence either. | | | They were less vocal - I heard claims they were the "silent majority" - but I had too many objections to swallow their arguments whole either. | | | One thing that An Execution in the Family does is show us the development (or a version of the development) of Robert Meeropol's life and attitudes, including his stance towards his parents and the case. |
|
http://www.zeek.net/books_0401.shtml
(665 words)
|
|
| |
| | How one teacher wrote the 'best song' of the century; New book tells story behind a chilling poem - 11.22.2000 - New ... |
| | The song became forever linked with Holiday, who even claimed in her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, to have written it. | | | Besides teaching for more than 25 years at DeWitt Clinton - the school he attended as a boy - Meeropol wrote plays and songs under the name Lewis Allan, including "The House I Live In," popularized by Frank Sinatra. | | | The late jazz writer Leonard Feather called Meeropol's "Strange Fruit" the "first significant protest in words and music." Time magazine simply named it the best song of the 20th century. |
|
http://www.nysut.org/newyorkteacher/2000-2001/001122billieholiday.html
(733 words)
|
|
| |
| | Ford Festival Time / The James Melton Show |
| | Composers: music by David H. Broekman (ASCAP) and lyric by Lewis Allan (ASCAP) [professional name of Abel Meeropol] 1978 Publisher: General Music Pub. | | | Ford Festival Time (musical variety, starring James Melton) |
|
http://www.classicthemes.com/50sTVThemes/themePages/fordFestival.html
(77 words)
|
|
| |
| | Jazz All About Jazz |
| | DM: Meeropol wrote both the words and the music, though there is a debate about the extent to which Holiday and an arranger, Danny Mendelsohn, re-shaped the music to suit her ends. | | | VLS: Just to be clear, did Meeropol (aka Lewis Allan) write both the melody and the lyrics of "Strange Fruit"? | | | Whatever they did to the song, Meeropol approved of it heartily, and still maintained that the composition was his alone. |
|
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/iviews/dmargolick.htm
(1716 words)
|
|
| |
| | Strange Fruit (Movie) |
| | Written by Abel Meeropol, the somber elegy was claimed as her own by Billie Holiday, who spread its chilling vision with the force of a gospel anthem. | | | The song's story is a much more hopeful model than my own for black-Jewish relations." The song's history, which was also told in last year's unrelated novel by David Margolick, takes unexpected turns: Meeropol, for example, adopted the two sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the American Communists executed in 1953. | | | Katz also found that his own life resonated with that of Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx: "My father taught at Howard for twenty years and started out very idealistic, but eventually, as a white Jewish man from Brooklyn, he became bitter. |
|
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/movies/articles/02/11/strangefruit.htm
(361 words)
|
|
| |
| | Remembering the Rosenbergs (Mega-Hurl Alert) |
| | Singers Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert were accompanied by Michael Meeropol on the guitar in a song honoring his adoptive mother. | | | Janiece Thompson, a New York concert and sessions singer, sang "Strange Fruit," the anti-lynching song written by Abel Meeropol. | | | Michael Meeropol, who was 10 when his parents were executed, said in an interview before the performance that the current political climate is reminiscent of the McCarthy era that claimed his parents' lives. |
|
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/932531/posts
(1151 words)
|
|
| |
| | Snally Gaster's about Strange Fruit |
| | Margolick's book is a short but wonderfully complex evocation of the many contexts and lives Abel Meeropol's song touched. | | | Strange Fruit is full of wonderful descriptions of Holiday singing the song: | | | When Meeropol first played the song for Holiday at the progressive night club, Cafe Society, she was not overly impressed. |
|
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/strange_fruit.html
(650 words)
|
|
| |
| | KQED Heritage: Black History: TV9 Programs |
| | The song, written by Jewish schoolteacher Abel Meeropol, continues to mesmerize with its chilling vision of a lynching. | | | Radio stations banned it, but when Billie Holiday sang "Strange Fruit," the whole world listened anyway. |
|
http://www.kqed.org/topics/history/heritage/black/tv.jsp
(3189 words)
|
|
| |
| | Bigroaphies of key figures in the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg |
| | (Abel Meeropol, incidentally, wrote the music and lyrics for "Strange Fruit," a haunting song about lynching. | | | Michael and Robert Meeropol are the sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. | | | In 1975, they authored We Are Your Sons, a book detailing their experience as sons of the Rosenbers, as well as proclaiming the innocence of their parents. |
|
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/rosenb/ROS_BMER.HTM
(431 words)
|
|
| |
| | Vol. I No. 35 DESTRUCTION & COMEBACK |
| | Meeropol wrote the song which would have a lasting impact on generations. | | | But the revolutionary lyrics took on a life of their own. | | | The song was covered by many other prominent performers, many associated with progressive causes--Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, even Sting! |
|
http://www.calamusbooks.com/newsletters/v1_35
(1924 words)
|
|
| |
| | The Austin Chronicle: Film Listings |
| | In this sop to peacetime ecumenism, Sinatra forestalls some kids from beating up a Jewish boy and sings the movie's eponymous song (also written by Abel Meeropol). | | | Also included on the bill is the 10-minute Oscar-winning short, "The House I Live In," directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Frank Sinatra. | | | (G) Billie Holiday's famous song about lynching (written by Bronx Jewish schoolteacher Abel Meeropol) is examined by contemporary artists and scholars, who comment on the history of black and Jewish relations in America. |
|
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Calendar/Film?Film=oid:142057
(289 words)
|
|
| |
| | Robert Meeropol - San Diego Jewish Journal |
| | He spent the first 18 years of his life with Abel Meeropol, a songwriter who wrote the lyrics to the classic anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit," popularized by Billy Holiday, and Anne Meeropol, a theatre director. | | | The timing of the book's release is not coincidental, Meeropol says. | | | The children are in their 50s and have lived their entire lives in the closet." |
|
http://www.sdjewishjournal.com/stories/nov03_2.html
(1123 words)
|
|
| |
| | North Texas e-News |
| | The House I Live In, sung by Frank Sinatra in a WW-II anti-bigotry short. | | | They had both been school teachers and Anne worked part-time while Abel worked at home on his songs. | | | At the end of 1999 (a year early for the rash of 20th century retrospectives) Time magazine named it the best song of the century. |
|
http://www.ntxe-news.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=3&num=8959
(989 words)
|
|
| |
| | Independent Lens . STRANGE FRUIT . The Film PBS |
| | The film explores how two such seemingly different political and still-resonant songs came to be written by the same man. | | | The story of composer Abel Meeropol doesn't end with "Strange Fruit." Working in Hollywood six years later, Meeropol penned his other well-known composition, the patriotic, Oscar-winning paean to tolerance "The House I Live In," which was performed by Frank Sinatra in a film short in 1945 and has experienced a revival since September 11, 2001. | | | While many people assume that the song "Strange Fruit" was written by Holiday herself, it actually began as a poem by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher and union activist from the Bronx who later set it to music. |
|
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/strangefruit/film.html
(513 words)
|
|
| |
| | Feature Display |
| | Meeropol's other best known composition was "The House I Live In", by Frank Sinatra. | | | The tale of the song "Strange Fruit" reflects on the lives of African-Americans, immigrant Jews, anticommunist government officials, radical Leftist organizers, music publishers and jazz musicians. | | | Abel Meeropol is also known for having adopted with his wife Anne the orphaned children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953. |
|
http://www.cameraplanet.com/divphps/feature_display.php?f_id=160&d_id=2
(661 words)
|
|
|
