DESCRIPTION:
Songwriters: Lewis Allan, Maurice Pearl, Dwayne P. Wiggins
New Moon Daughter - Studio album by Cassandra Wilson
Blue Note 1995
Producer - Craig Street

Personnel:

Cassandra Wilson -- vocals, acoustic guitar
Cyro Baptista -- percussion, Jew's-Harp, shaker
Dougie Bowne -- percussion, drums, whistle, vibraphone
Gary Breit -- Hammond organ
Kevin Breit -- acoustic & electric guitar, banjo, bouzouki
Brandon Ross -- acoustic & electric guitar
Charles Burnham -- violin
Tony Cedras-- accordion
Graham Haynes -- cornet
Lawrence "Butch" Morris -- cornet
Jeff Haynes -- percussion, bongos
Peepers -- background vocals
Mark Peterson -- bass
Lonnie Plaxico -- bass
Gib Wharton -- pedal steel guitar
Chris Whitley -- guitar.

"Strange Fruit" was a poem written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx, about the lynching of two black men. He published under the pen name Lewis Allan, derived from two children he lost in their infancy. "Strange Fruit" is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who released her first recording of it in 1939, the year she first sang it. It exposed American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had occurred chiefly in the South but also in all other regions of the United States. The writer, Abel, set it to music and with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan, performed it as a protest song in New York venues, including Madison Square Garden.
The song has been covered by numerous artists, as well as inspiring novels, other poems and other creative works. In 1978 Holiday's version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

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