"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" (later renamed "Theme for Lester Young") is a jazz standard composed by Charles Mingus originally recorded by his sextet in 1959 as listed below, 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-rimmed pork pie hat. It is one of Mingus' best-known compositions and has been recorded by many jazz and jazz fusion artists. Joni Mitchell added lyrics to the song for her album Mingus, recorded in collaboration with Mingus during the months before his death. Rahsaan Roland Kirk also composed lyrics to the song, included on his album The Return of the 5000 Lb. Man.
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Famous quotes containing the words goodbye, pork, pie and/or hat:
“The colicky baby who becomes calm, the quiet infant who throws temper tantrums at two, the wild child at four who becomes serious and studious at six all seem to surprise their parents. It is difficult to let go of one’s image of a child, say goodbye to the child a parent knows, and get accustomed to this slightly new child inhabiting the known child’s body.”
—Ellen Galinsky (20th century)
“The pork sizzles and cries for fish. Luckily for the foolish race, and this particularly foolish generation of trout, the night shut down at last, not a little deepened by the dark side of Ktaadn, which, like a permanent shadow, reared itself from the eastern bank.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No man’s pie is freed
From his ambitious finger.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In families children tend to take on stock roles, as if there were hats hung up in some secret place, visible only to the children. Each succeeding child selects a hat and takes on that role: the good child, the black sheep, the clown, and so forth.”
—Ellen Galinsky (20th century)