Goodbye Pork Pie Hat (Mitchell)

'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' is an instrumental jazz standard composed by Charles Mingus originally recorded by his sextet in 1959 and released on his album 'Mingus Ah Um'. Mingus wrote it as an elegy for saxophonist Lester Young, who had died two months prior to the recording session, and was known to wear a broad-brimmed pork pie hat.

Lyrics were added by Joni MITCHELL:

When Charlie speaks of Lester, you know someone great has gone
The sweetest swinging music man, had a Porkie Pig hat on
A bright star, in a dark age, when the bandstands had a thousand ways
Of refusing a black man admission

Black musician, in those days they put him in an underdog position
Cellars and chitlins' when Lester took him a wife
Arm and arm went black and white and some saw red
And drove them from their hotel bed

Love is never easy, it's short of the hope we have for happiness
Bright and sweet, love is never easy street!
Now we are black and white embracing out in the lunatic New York night
It's very unlikely we'll be driven out of town or be hung in a tree, that's unlikely!

Tonight these crowds are happy and loud
Children are up dancing in the streets
In the sticky middle of the night, 
Summer serenade of taxi horns and fun arcades

Where right or wrong under neon every feeling goes on! 
For you and me, the sidewalk is a history book and a circus
Dangerous clowns balancing dreadful and wonderful perceptions
They have been handed day by day, generations on down

We came up from the subway, on the music midnight makes
To Charlie's bass and Lester's saxophone in taxi horns and brakes, 
Now Charlie's down in Mexico with the healers, 
So the sidewalk leads us with music to two little dancers 
Dancing outside a black bar, there's a sign up on the awning, 
It says "Pork Pie Hat Bar" and there's black babies dancing tonight


Recordings exist by Joni Mitchell (1979), Cheryl Fisher, Mark Murphy, Lupa, Lara Puglia, Angelica Matveeva, Lyambiko, Ku-umba Frank Lacy w/ Mingus Big Band, etc.