Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

This jazz instrumental was written and recorded by the jazz musician Charles Mingus. It was dedicated to saxophonist Lester Young, who had died a couple of months before this 1959 session. Young was sartorially famous for wearing a pork pie hat, bringing it back in fashion in the 1940s.

Mingus played the double bass, but the lead instrument on this track is the alto saxophone played by John Handy, one of several top jazz players Mingus used on his recordings.

The original version runs 4:46, but longer versions exist. When the Mingus Ah Um album was reissued in 1979, it was restored to 5:40. Played live, the song could go on for 30 minutes, as heard on the album The Great Concert Of Charles Mingus, taken from a show in Paris in 1964.