Funny this comes up... I did a gig last Sunday night in Long Island. I rode back on the train with a ninety six year old friend of Meeropool. He was quoted in the most recent book about Billy Holiday, misquoted really, where they have him saying that she did not understand the song. What he really said, he told me, is that when they sang it in the years when it was sang by friends of Meeropol alone, they almost shouted blood on the branches blood on the root, and that many of their friends where not drawn to her way of crooning the song. But, they did not say whe did not understand it. I will have to ask what his name was again, he was a science teacher... facinating fellow.
Cheers Larry