"Fables of Faubus" is a composition written by jazz double bassist and composer Charles Mingus.
One of Mingus's most explicitly political works,[2] the song was written as a direct protest against Arkansas governor Orval Faubus,[3] who in 1957 sent out the National Guard to prevent the racial integration of Little Rock Central High School by nine African American teenagers, in what became known as the Little Rock Crisis.
[1] Critic Don Heckman commented of the unedited "Original Faubus Fables" in a 1962 review that it was "a classic Negro put-down in which satire becomes a deadly rapier-thrust.
This kind of commentary, brimful of feeling, bitingly direct and harshly satiric, appears far too rarely in jazz.
The Normand Guilbeault Ensemble released a version called "Fables of (George Dubya) Faubus" in 2004.
On YouTube, there is a version, with the Metropole Orkest (conducted by Jules Buckley), with Christian Scott & Shabaka Hutchings as soloists as part of the BBC Proms of 2017.
The Mingus Big Band's recording of "Fables of Faubus", on their album Gunslinging Birds, features in the background the pianist playing tunes of the American Civil War, like the Confederate "(I Wish I Was in) Dixie" and the Union "Battle Hymn of the Republic.