Charles Mingus: Original Faubus Fables

(This is an edited transcript of Episode 21 of the Sounds Out of Time podcast. Here’s a playlist of the tracks featured.)

(Opening: Charles Mingus and band singing)

Oh Lord, don’t let ’em shoot us!

Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em stab us!

Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em tar and feather us!

Oh, Lord, no more swastikas!

That’s “Original Faubus Fables,” by Charles Mingus and the Jazz Workshop, from the album Charles Mingus Presents Mingus (0:21–0:36).

Mingus introduces the track by saying it’s “Dedicated to the first, or second or third, all-American heel, Faubus.” He’s talking about the racist Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, who defied a Supreme Court order to integrate the Little Rock public schools until President Eisenhower sent in the National Guard.

The story goes that Mingus originally wrote the song and the lyrics for the 1959 album Mingus Ah Um, but that Columbia Records refused to let him include the lyrics, so he recorded an instrumental version for that record that he called “Fables of Faubus,” and then a year later he recorded the version with the lyrics and retitled it “Original Faubus Fables” for the album Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus.