1958
GOIN' STRONG * DON HEAD * DUB 2840 * USA
The Dub label was located in Little Rock Arkansas and ran only one year from 1957 to 1958, issuing a total of eight records, only one of which was by Don Head. That same period Little Rock Arkansas became the focus of the entire US with the group of students known as the 'Little Rock Nine'. Little Rock was the first of two Southern States to implement desegregation laws in its high schools, but the night before desegregation was to come into being Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out the state's National Guard to surround Little Rock Central High School and prevent any black students from entering in order to protect citizens and property from possible violence by protesters he claimed were headed in caravans toward Little Rock. As it was after about three weeks of argi bargi Faubus came unstuck as U.S. Congressman Brooks Hays and Little Rock Mayor Woodrow Mann asked the federal government for help, first in the form of U.S. marshals. Finally, on September 24, Mann sent a telegram to President Eisenhower requesting troops. They were dispatched that day and the President also federalized the entire Arkansas National Guard, taking it away from the Governor. On September 25, 1957, the nine black students entered the school under the protection of 1,000 members of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army. Then as now the repressive state apparatus, from whichever political persuasion, will do anything and go to any lengths to process children through the state 'education' system. What is noticeable from the above record, and has been a prominent feature of black music from the earliest recorded examples, is the subversive and anarchistic use of language. The above Rockabilly (predominantly a working class musical expression) cut has the colloquial 'goin' instead of the grammatically correct 'going', subtly undermining the notion of grammar that many young people, by far the majority of those buying this record, were simultaneously being 'taught' in schools.
"I suspect that we have not
yet gotten rid of God, since we still have faith in grammar." Friedrich
Nietzsche.