Strange Fruit—Murfin Home Confinement Music Festival 2020

Strange Fruit sung by Billie Holiday

We interrupt our Home Confinement Music Festival to take sad and outraged note of another deadly plague—the lynching of Blacks and other people of color due to lives devalued by systematic racism and white privilege.  Yes, the lynchings that Ida B. Wells wrote about 130 years ago, that the NAACP investigated and exposed beginning 100 years ago, and that Billie Holiday sang about 80 years ago are still with us, they just look different.  Most of the time instead of hangman’s nooses or stakes and pyres we now have police violence and white nationalist inspired vigilantism, Instead of a howling mob we can have a single white woman set up a Black man for possible police execution with a feigned hysterical call.

This poster is being sold to raise money for the ACLU's continued responses to police violence and murder;

The same old shit wrapped up in a pretty bow for the 21st Century.  Just ask George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, Amand Aurbry, and Christopher Cooper to name just a few of the most recent victims.

AbelMeeropol cited this photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930, as inspiring his poem.

Strange Fruit was written in 1937 as a poem by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish poet, writer, teacher, activist and songwriter under his pseudonym Lewis Allan, as a protest against lynchings.  He published the poem under the title Bitter Fruit in The New York Teacher, a Teachers Union magazine.  He had asked others, notably Earl Robinson to set his poems to music, he wrote the music for Strange Fruit himself. Meeropol, his wife Anne, and Black vocalist Laura Duncan performed it at Madison Square Garden rally.

Abel Meeropol wrote the kyric and music for Strange Fruit and first sang with his wife Anne at a Madison Square Garden rally 1939.

Accounts are conflicting on exactly how nightclub chanteuse and band singer Billie Holiday got the song.  We do know that despite fearing to sing it because it might make her a target of racial assault herself, that she first performed in in 1939 at Café Society in Greenwich Village, New York's first integrated nightclub.  She continued to sing the piece, making it a regular part of her live performances with special demands for her performance venues—she would close with it; waiters had to stop all service in advance; the room would be in darkness except for a spotlight on Holiday’s face; and there would be no encore. During the musical introduction to the song, Holiday stood with her eyes closed, as if she were evoking a prayer.

Fearing boycotts Southern record stores and retribution against the affiliates of its CBS Radio Network Holliday’s regular label, Columbia Records, refused to issue a recording and her regular producer John Hammond, usually an outspoken liberal, refused to work on it.  Eventually Milt Gabler, whose Commodore label produced alternative jazz, got one time agreement from Columbia to release a version with Frankie Newton's eight-piece Cafe Society Band on April 20, 1939.

A photographer captured Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit as she recorded it in 1939

Holiday recorded two major sessions with the one in 1939 and another in 1944. The song was highly regarded; the 1939 recording eventually sold a million copies, in time becoming Holiday’s biggest-selling recording.  She continued to sing it live in all of her appearances for the rest of her troubled life.  She became so identified with the song that she is often credited erroneously as a writer or co-writer.

The song has been covered by others, most notably in a searing performance by Nina Simone.  Diana Ross sang it in the 1972 bio pick Lady Sings the Blues. 

The movie poster for the melodramatic bio-pic Lady Sings the Blues.

The extraordinary honors for Holiday’s masterpiece recording include:  election to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978; Best Song of the Century by Time magazine in 1999; one of 50 recordings chosen that in 2002 to add to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress; one of the Top 20 Political Songs by The New Statesman in 2010; as the #1 of 100 Songs of the South by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2011; and t was also included in the list of Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Once described a “declaration of war” and “the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement,” Strange Fruit horribly relevant yet again.

Toaster Pops Up to Make the Great American Breakfast Possible

Inventor Charles P. Strite with his patent number enjoying toast from his invention.

It took a few years, but American breakfast tables were on their way to being revolutionized when Charles P. Strite filed his application for a patent on the electric pop-up toaster on May 29, 1919. 

Toasting bread to preserve it by removing moisture dated back to Roman times.  In the 19th Century various devices were invented to hold slices of bread over an open flame for toasting.  But it was a tricky process requiring diligence and constant attention and a lot of bread simply went up in flames. 

In the 1890’s inventors in England and the United States patented similar devices that toasted bread over heated electrical wires one side at a time.  The devices were crude, expensive, and dangerous since the glowing filaments were openly exposed.  They also frequently failed or burst into flame because the temperature to toast bread—better than 350º Fahrenheit—caused filaments in the air to melt or ignited near-by combustibles. 

A side opening exposed filament two slice toaster.  The bread had to be flipped to toast both sides.

The discovery of a strong nickel-chromium alloy by Albert Marsh made modern electrical toasters practical. George Schneider of the American Electrical Heater Company soon patented a toaster using Marsh’s alloy.  There was a race among dozens of companies to produce practical toasters. 

In 1909 the General Electrical Company’s Frank Shailor patented what would become the first really successful devise, the D-12 Toaster. In 1914 Lloyd and Hazel Copeman perfected a toaster that could flip the bread to face the heating filaments without having to touch it by hand.  Competing companies had to either license the Copeman patents for the Automatic Toaster—as did Westinghouse—or find new ways to expose both sides to heat. 

Dozens of different devices were introduced, but none were really satisfactory until Strite, a master mechanic at a Stillwater, Minnesota plant got tired of burnt toast in the company cafeteria.  Tinkering away, he used a mechanical timer and springs to create a toaster that would “pop-up” a slice of bread that had been heated by filaments on both sides when it reached the correct heat to brown the bread.  He was granted his patent in 1921 and founded the Waters-Genter Company to manufacture and market the toasters to restaurants. 

The instruction booklet for the first single-slice Toastmaster for home use.

Originally assembled by hand, they were far too expensive for home use.  The first 100 were sold to the Childs restaurant chain.  By 1926 the company improved production techniques and redesigned the machine for home use under the brand name Toastmaster.  After 1938 he chrome sides of the toasters were etched with a triple loop logo meant to resemble the heating filaments inside.  The Edison Company eventually absorbed the Toastmaster brand.  Through various owners the name and basic design have continued to be marketed to this day. 

Toastmaster toasters and other appliances were manufactured in a plant in Algonquin, Illinois in McHenry County until the 1990’s.  Now all products are produced offshore, mostly in China.

Although popular, it took another invention to really send sales through the roof and make the toaster a center piece of every home kitchen. 

Otto Rohwedder's final prototype bread slicer in 1930 also wrapped the loaves in paper to keep them fresh. Just five years after it was introduced to the baking industry, 80 %  of bread was sold pre-sliced

Bread was sold through local bakeries in whole loaves.  It had to be hand sliced at home to be put in the toaster.  As anyone who has ever tried it can attest, it takes a very sharp knife and some skill to slice white bread to a proper thickness without either mashing the loaf or sawing it to crumbs.  Which is why prior to 1930 most people probably had biscuits or cornbread with breakfast than toast.  But in 1928 Otto Frederick Rohwedder patented an automatic bread slicing machine that also wrapped and sealed the sliced loaf in protective waxed paper.  

In 1930 the Continental Baking Company introduced Wonder Bread and within just three years pre-sliced bread outsold whole loaves across the country.  With perfectly formed slices, sales of Toastmaster toasters skyrocketed as well.  

The classic art deco design of the two-slice Toastmaster pop-up was little changed for decades.

In the 1930’s the two slice Toastmaster was introduced and remained little changed through the rest of the century.  Most other home toaster brands were very similar.  Four slice models were introduced to speed breakfast for larger families and in the late 20th Century toaster slots were widened to accommodate the rising popularity of bagels far beyond their urban Jewish roots.

In the ‘60’s and ‘70’s front loading toaster ovens came into fashion and promised to be handy for heating TV dinners and other cooking chores as well but the rise of the microwave oven—which can’t toast—took up the kitchen counter space formerly used by the ovens.  Homes that had replaced their pop-up toasters with them had to revert back. 

A vintage GE toaster oven and broiler.

Toastmaster toaster and its main competitors had been a not-inexpensive small appliance designed to be durable over a life time and easily repairable by any handy man.  Many modern replacements made in China or elsewhere in Asia replaced heavy-duty chrome and Bakelite constructions with light weight plastic and other materials.  They cost less than $15 at big box discount stores.  They break or fail after two or three years of regular use and are intended to be disposable and cheaply replaceable.

Pass the butter and jam please.

We’ll Meet Again—Murfin Home Confinement Music Festival 2020

We'll Meet Again sung by Vera Lynn

We’ll Meet Again, like other World War II separation songs seems especially apt as we miss physical contact with loved ones during our Coronavirus isolation.  But the most beloved of all British wartime songs and its revered singer Vera Lynn has officially been turned out for new duty during the current crisis.

The first British sheet music for We'll Meet Again surprisingly did not feature Vera Lynn or an explicit war time context. That was quickly remedied in subsequent issues. 

We’ll Meet Again was written by English songwriters Ross Parker and Hughie Charles in1939, the earliest day of the war.  It quickly became popular with the troops on their way to a doomed defense of France that ended with the evacuation of Dunkirk.  Lynn sang the song on radio and everyone one with a phonograph in the United Kingdom wanted a copy. And she sang it hundreds of time in personal appearances for soldiers, sailors, and airmen encouraging them to join her on the final choruses.  In 1943 she took it to the screen in a British Columbia pictures film. 

Lynn sharing tea with soldiers and sailors from a YMCA special train car.  The troops adored her.

For some reason Columbia did not heavily promote the movie in the U.S. and her famous recording only got to #29 on this side of the pond, though singers like Dinah Shore covered it.  In fact most Americans best remember record as the song Slim Pickens rides a nuke to doomsday in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Dr. Strangelove or How I Stopped Working and Learned to Love the Bomb.

We'll Meet Again and Vera Lynn were invoked by the Queen in her rare special TV broadcast about the Coronavirus emergency.  Just 9 years younger than Lynn, she was herself a World War II veteran.

The indestructible Lynn sang the song in London on the 60th anniversary of VE Day in 2005.  On April 5, 2020, Queen Elizabeth II referenced the song in a rare televised address that aired on the BBC in which she expressed her gratitude for the efforts people are taking to mitigate the Coronavirus pandemic and acknowledged the severe challenges being faced by families across the world. The Queen, of course, was a young Princess was an Army lorry driver during the War.   The reference spurred a cover by Katherine Jenkins with Lynn on a video screen to benefit the National Health Service (NHS) charities, which made it to # 72 on the UK Singles Chart.  Then in May Lynn’s original recording was re-released for the 75th anniversary of VE-Day reached #55.

Still hale and hearty 103 year old Dame Vera took the attention graciously.

Sojourner Truth—What She Really Said in That Famous Speech

Sojourner Truth giving her famous speech at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron in 1851.

On May 28, 1851 fifty-four year old Sojourner Truth mounted the platform and addressed the delegates to an Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron.  The meeting was held only three years after the inaugural Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. 

Truth was a former slave who had gained fame as a lay preacher and abolitionist speaker.  Accounts differ as to whether she was fully welcomed or if there were some women afraid that her presence would antagonize men otherwise sympathetic to her cause.  But Truth was already friendly with leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and most of her audience that day were either already convinced abolitionists, or at least sympathetic. 

The speech Truth gave has outlasted any other comments at the meeting and it is widely quoted by both feminists and African-American activists.  But the speech she gave may not have been the one widely quoted with its repeated refrain of “Ain't I a Woman?” 

Truth was born a slave in 1797 in Swartekill, New York.  Her birth name was Isabella Baumfree, one of thirteen children.  The Hardenbergh family which owned her was from old Dutch colonial stock and Dutch was her first language.  She was sold along with a herd of sheep at the age of nine to English speaking tavern keeper John Neely for $100. 

By her later accounts Neely beat and raped her.  She was sold twice more becoming the property of John Dumont of West Park in 1810.  Conditions were less harsh than with her previous owners and Isabella, called Belle, labored there for several years.  She fell in love with a slave named Robert from a neighboring farm, but his owner forbad the relationship and beat him so severely that he later died.  Robert fathered her first two children. 

In 1817 Dumont selected another of his slaves, Thomas, to be her husband and he fathered three more children by 1826.

Under New York’s gradual emancipation law slavery would officially end on July 4, 1827.  Dumont had promised her release early in exchange for “doing well and faithful,” but reneged after a hand injury left her less than a fully effective worker.  Feeling cheated but determined to be fair to her master, she spun him 100 lbs. of wool, what she thought her remaining time was worth and escaped with her infant daughter. 

She could not take her other children because even under emancipation they would be held as bond servants until they were 21.  She found a sympathetic home with Isaac and Maria Van Wagener who took her in and settled her debt with Dumont for $20.  She stayed with them until emancipated under the law. 

Learning that Dumont had illegally sold her five year old son south to Alabama, she sued her former master with the support of the Van Wageners and after several months was able to recover her son.  She was the first Black in New York State to successfully sue a white man. 

During her time with the Wagner family she experienced a religious conversion and became a devout Christian. 

Sojourner Truth's association with the religious fraudster Robert Mathews led to her indictment for the murder of her previous employer.  After a sensational trial se was aquitted.

In 1829 she moved with her son Peter to New York City to serve as housekeeper for evangelist preacher Elijah Pierson.  Through Pierson she met the religious charlatan Robert Matthews, a.k.a. Matthias Kingdom and the Prophet Matthias who had bilked Pierson and several others out of two houses and large sums of money.  Bella went to work for him in 1832.  When Pierson died a short time later both she and Matthews were charged with his murder but acquitted.  Mathews headed west in an attempt to strike up an alliance with the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith leaving Belle behind. 

Despite the notoriety of the trial she was able to scrape together a living in the city.  Her son Peter signed on whaling ship in 1839 and after three letters never heard from him again. 

In 1842 she adopted the name Sojourner Truth because, “The Spirit calls me and I must.”  She became a Methodist, and like many others became a lay preacher and traveling evangelist mixing in a heavy dose of abolitionism.  Gaining a reputation she was invited to join Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts in 1844.  One of many utopian social experiments of the era, the Association was founded by abolitionists and supported women’s rights and pacifism.  Other members of the association included leading abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Fredrick Douglass.  Like other communal experiments of the era, the Northampton Association collapsed 1847 and Truth went to work as a housekeeper for Garrison’s brother-in-law. 

The front piece and title page of the first edition of Sojourner Truth's memoirs.

While there she dictated her memoirs to her friend Olivia Gilbert.  In 1850 Garrison arranged a private printing of The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave.  The book was widely read in liberal circles and cemented Truth’s reputation.  The same year she was able to buy her own home in Northampton for $300 and attended the first full National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts where she shared the platform such leaders as Lucy Stone, Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis, Ernestine Rose, Antoinette Brown as well as old friends Garrison and Douglass.  More than 900 people attended the convention, which attracted wide, if sometimes derisive, coverage. 

Truth came to the 1850 meeting in while on a western speaking tour with abolitionists George Thompson.  The first published version of her speech was transcribed by local newspaperman Marius Robinson and was published a month after the event.  The speech was stirring and contrasted the leisure afforded white women who were “put on a pedestal” with the grim “work or die” reality for Black women both slave and free.  But it was rendered a standard English and nowhere included the words “Ain’t I a woman.” 

Those were included, along with idiomatic—and stereotypical—southern Black speech patterns in a version of the speech published 13 years after it was given by one of the meetings organizers, Frances Dana Barker Gage.  Gage’s version is the one widely quoted today.  Yet it has its many doubters.  It is unlikely that Truth, a native Dutch speaker who had spent her entire life well north of the Mason-Dixon Line, spoke with any kind of southern drawl, Black or otherwise.  On the other hand, supporters of the Gage version argue that Robinson “cleaned up” Truth’s raw language for his genteel readers. 

More telling are factual inaccuracies in the Gage version, including the claim that she had 13 children “most of which” were sold into slavery.  In fact she had five children, one of whom was temporarily sold into slavery.  Gage also embellished the circumstances of the speech, making it sound as if Truth spoke to a hostile audience, whereas contemporary accounts, including her own, attested to a warm reception.  The speech as recorded by Gage in 1863 began:

 Wall, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be somethin' out o' kilter. I tink dat 'twixt de niggers of de Souf and de womin at de Norf, all talkin' 'bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all dis here talkin' 'bout? Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place! 'And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman?...

By contrast Robinson recorded:

 I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now...

To my ears, the originally published journal sound much more likely to have been given by a woman who had been raised in the North, had spent many years in association with highly educated people, and made a living as a preacher and speaker. 

Truth spent the next decade touring in support of abolition and women’s rights working in close association with Robinson.  She had many colorful encounters with hostile audiences, including one where a heckler insisted that she was a man so she opened her shirt to show her breasts. 

In 1856 she sold her Northumberland home and moved to the Battle Creek, Michigan area which she would consider home for the rest of her life.  The household in her new home included a grown daughter, Elizabeth Banks and two grandsons. 

Sojourner Truth in her later years.

With the outbreak of the Civil War she saw her older grandson, James Caldwell enlist in the famous Black 54th Massachusetts while she recruited other blacks to rally for the Union.  In 1864 she was called to Washington to join the National Freedman's Relief Association to improve the lot of newly freed slaves.  She met President Abraham Lincoln, and almost a hundred years before Rosa Parks insisted on riding Washington horse car trolleys effectively, if temporarily ending segregation on them. 

She tried to claim her 40 acres and a Mule as a freedman herself, appealing to President Ulysses Grant himself in 1870.  But despite seven years of effort was turned down because she was a woman and had been freed by a northern state years earlier. 

The Sojourner Truth Memorial statue in Florence, Michigan.

Truth resumed speaking tours after the war then returned to Battle Creek to try to vote in the 1872 Election.  But she was tiring out.  Sojourner Truth died in her Battle Creek home on November 26, 1886 at the age of 86.