Goodbye Pork Pie Hat Lyrics - Shadows And Light (live) - 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 chittlins' 

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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! 

Photos 

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!