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Stranger than Fiction

By Jody Kolodzey

A few days after her 24th birthday in April 1939, Billie Holiday wandered into the Commodore Music Shop, a record store on East 42nd Street in New York, “very unhappy,” as proprietor Milt Gabler later recalled. In those days, record stores also functioned as recording studios, and Holiday was interested in seeing “Strange Fruit,” which was fast becoming her signature song,… return to article

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