even milt gabler conceded it was a downer, at least initially. its appeal was more limited.ven rarefied, the people who bought record were the same folks read w.e.b. dubois in crisis and knew masses listened to the almanac singers they marched for and in some cases off to loyalist spain. they were disproportionately jewish, as were for that matter. meeropol we've already heard about josephson, the man who staged that of cafÉ society, eddie and milt gabler. strange was yet another of those wonderful black jewish collaborations yore which by definition meant it wasn't part of the mainstream. it's cult status makes it fanciful that that federal narcotics agents even listen to it, let alone hounded holiday for it. as a recent book and movie has have represented and as lewis porter refuted in jazz in an article in jazz times, that claim is no truer than. the suggestion in the in the film ladies sings the blues that wrote strange fruit herself after happening upon a lynching while touring in the south, meeropol worked assiduously in his last years, remind people that it was he --