• Natchez Burning Trilogy
b/ Greg Iles
“Natchez Burning”
“The Bone Tree”
“Mississippi Blood”
Natchez, Mississippi
• Map of scenes featured in Greg Iles “Natchez Burning” Trilogy

Strange Fruit

b/ Billie Holiday (Tricky / Verve Re-Mix)

“Strange Fruit” is a song performed most famously by
Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939.
Written by teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem and published in 1937.
Its hauntingly vivid description of a lynching, served as one of the earliest, screaming protest against racism in America.

• “Say It Loud, I’m Black And I’m Proud — James Brown (1969)

Such lynchings reached a peak in the South at the turn of the century,
but continued into the 1960s.
According to the Tuskegee Institute, 1,953 Americans were murdered by lynching, about three quarters of them black.

The lyrics are an extended metaphor describing lynching victims as a tree’s hanging fruit.
Meeropol set the words to music, and with his wife and singer Laura Duncan, performed it as a protest song in New York City venues in the late 1930s, including Madison Square Garden.

 
“Strange Fruit”

b/ Tricky (Verve Re-Mix)
The song continues to be covered by numerous artists …
Nina Simone
UB40
Jeff Buckley
Siouxsie and the Banshees
Robert Wyatt and
Dee Dee Bridgewater
and has inspired novels, other poems, and other creative works.

• GREG ILES / TRILOGY
Natchez Burning
The Bone Tree
Mississippi Blood
Natchez, Mississippi (map)

Ahmet Ertegun called “Strange Fruit”

A DECLARATION OF WAR
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.

“Bridging The Gap”

b/ Nas (w/Olu Dara)

Olu Dara

In the World:
From Natchez to New York
Dara’s debut (as a singer/guitar player)

“Okra”
“Rain Shower”
“Natchez Shopping Blues”
“Your Lips”
“Harlem Country girl”
“Zora”
“Young Mama”
“Bubber (If Only)”
“Father Blues”
“Jungle Jay” (w/Nas)
“Kiane”

“No One Knows You, When You’re Down And Out”

b/ Bessie Smith