charles mingus - goodbye pork pie hat
Algún tiempo después, Joni Mitchell le puso esta maravillosa letra:

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 chittlins'

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!