Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

Mingus wrote it as an elegy for the saxophonist Lester Young, who had died two months before the Mingus Ah Um session and was known for his broad-brimmed pork pie hats. It is among his best-known compositions and became a jazz standard. He later recorded it as Theme for Lester Young on Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus, and again on Three or Four Shades of Blues in 1977.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk sang lyrics for it in 1976, and Joni Mitchell wrote her own for her 1979 album Mingus. Bert Jansch and John Renbourn recorded it in 1966, and Pentangle played it live at the Royal Festival Hall, released on Sweet Child in 1968. John McLaughlin recorded it in 1971 and Jeff Beck on Wired in 1976, and Stanley Clarke, June Tabor, Derek Sherinian and Bernie Worrell have also recorded it. In June 2026 CBS News included it in a list of 250 essential American songs of 250 years.