strange fruit

Yesterday we went to Guiseley to the same supermarket but different version. . 

So first doggy walk the junk shops. I am around to day as well because I do not start work until 5pm.

Yesterday I started at 5pm thinking I had until 10pm to go.....and got sent home early again as all overtime has been cut. I did four extra hours this week. They now want it back. So I will probably get sent back to night as well.

I found a junk shop selling old old vinyl for 29p each. Most of it was not even worth that. Val Doonican!!???? Oklahoma! and a very lot of Handel's water music. 

First I spied a Frank Meadow Sutcliffe print and then a Billie Holiday vinyl, Polydor and suitably crackly when played. excellent. And I did go straight home with my sandwiches for lunch and play it too......

Billie Holiday. Now there is a real blast from the past.

From the days of my flat in Lansdown crescent, Bath. end of the 1970's early 1980s. I had a couple of old records of Billie Holiday. She was a real fave at that time. I had a strange mixture of music and strange fruit was my ultimate. 

Billie Holiday died before I was born and her greatest performances were in Harlem in the 1940s. She was an American singer/song writer with a career spanning over thirty years. she died in July 1959  a broken heart, drug and alcohol abuse  after a lot of abusive relationships killed her in the end.

she suffered rape, working as a prostitute and teenage pregnancy. she moved to harlem in 1928 and aged 14 she started work in a brothel.in those days it was five dollars a client.....she went to prison for prostitution too.

Billie started singing in night clubs such as Pod's and Jerry's on 133rd street and Brooklyn, Elk's club.

https://youtu.be/VG1hUH3zmhk   Here is the link to Symphony in black with duke Ellington. You will have to copy and paste I am affraid as that is the only way to get it to work (that I know!!!)

This magnificent old movie is just wow.....if you are into this era it does not get any better.

So Billie Holiday was a real favorite. I was an art student at the time.....enough said. I did not drink  myself in those days. That came a bit later.

I played this for Lee whilst we ate our lunch. Not at all his thing. He thinks I may be a little madder than my usual...

so I put my latest print on the wall with a deft bang of the hammer, replayed strange fruit and then got out Gone with the wind and settled down to watch until work time.

Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. This is the print I found. 

I found one the other week too for 20pence in the junk shop in Otley . When in Whitby with my American friends I stuck my nose up to the glass in the shop and boggled at the prices. I love this stuff and that shop has been there for ever. I had loads of prints when I lived in Bath. Bought on my visits to my Grandma.

So who is he then!? well .....

Here are some others I would not mind owning too. looking at the prices in the shop I will be waiting for them to appear in junk shops.....

Frank was a pioneering photographer from the turn of the century. His works were mostly of Whitby and the fishing industry.

He was born in Headingly, Leeds. You see I bet you thought he was from Whitby!...Well he was a portrait photographer by trade and lived on Broomfield terrace, Whitby then moved to Sleights.

So todays treasures.

Strange fruit ...the words. There are others that have recorded this but none even get close to the original.

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

Songwriters: Lewis Allan / Maurice Pearl / Dwayne P Wiggins

Strange Fruit lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

The youtube link to this song sung by the Great Billie holiday is below if you want to find out for yourself why this is the only version worth listening to.......

https://youtu.be/Web007rzSOI    https://youtu.be/Web007rzSOI

so basically you will have to copy and paste the link because it is the only way I can get it to work on here.