Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
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When Charlie speaks of Lester
You know someone great has gone
The sweeter swinging music man
Had a Porgy Pig hat on
A bright star in a dark age
When the bed-stands had a thousand ways
Of refusing a black man admission
Black musician
In those days they put him in an underdog position
Centers and chitterlings
When Lester took him a wife
Arm in 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
And we sing out in the lunatic New York night
It's very unlikely we'll be driven out of town
Or be hung in the tree
That's unlikely
Tonight these groves are happy and loud
Children are up dancing in the street
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 historic book
And the circus dangerous clowns
Balancing dreadful in wonderful perceptions
They have been handed day by day
Generations went on
We came up from the subway
On the music midnight made
To Charlie's bass and Lester's saxophone
And taxi horns and braids
Now Charlie's down in Mexico
With the healers
So the sidewalk lingers with music to two
Little dancers
Dancing outside a black bar
There's a sign up on the awning
It says "Porgy Pie Hat Bar"
And there's black babies dancing tonight