Today, I made Deacon (a character in the Neverending Saga) a pork pie hat. Sometimes a great guitarist just needs a little bit of smooth style. The pork pie hat might have had its fashion heyday in the first half of the 20th century, but in 1975, Deacon can still own a look inspired (for me) by the musical piece “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.” The instrumental version was composed by Charles Mingus as an elegy for the pioneering jazz saxophonist Lester Young, who died in March 1959. In 1975, Joni Mitchell added her lyrics to the composition. Her version included the following final verses:
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
I continued reading Paul Lisicky’s memoir Song So Wild And Blue. Today’s reading mused on the complex relationships within families, both his immediate family (parents and two brothers), and their larger family, brought together for a funeral. Family relationships are complicated by the secret of his sexuality, all of it woven into accounts of attending his first Joni Mitchell concert as well as his performing three of his own compositions in a coffeehouse; his reflections about Mitchell’s fluid musical styles and subjects; and his assessment that maybe “[at] this point in time, [Mitchell] was more interested in thinking about all the ways we are alone, all the ways we traveled with and developed psychic resilience through our losses… Maybe she was processing the tension between expectations and the inevitable outcome, which is another way to say that life makes a mess of our attempts to corral and shape it. Life chastens our reaching, whether it comes to love or the songs we write.”
So much to think about.
Today’s playlist included these songs by Mitchell.
“Refuge of the Roads” 1976
“The Last Time I Saw Richard” 1971
“Paprika Plains” 1977
“In France They Kiss on Main Street” 1975
“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” 1959, 1975
“Car On A Hill” 1974