"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is an instrumental jazz composition by Charles Mingus. It was recorded by his sextet on 12 May 1959 and released that year on the album Mingus Ah Um, produced by Teo Macero for Columbia. The personnel include the tenor saxophonists John Handy and Booker Ervin, with Horace Parlan on piano, Mingus on double bass and Dannie Richmond on drums. Mingus wrote the piece as an elegy for the saxophonist Lester Young, who had died two months before the session; Young was known for his broad-brimmed pork pie hats. The track is classed under hard bop and bop. Mingus later recast it as "Theme for Lester Young" in recordings from 1963 and 1977. It became a jazz standard and is listed in the Real Book. Bert Jansch and John Renbourn (1966), Pentangle (1968), Jeff Beck (1976) and Stanley Clarke (1988) are among the many artists who recorded it. Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1976), Joni Mitchell (1979) and June Tabor (1989) later added lyrics, as did Lauren Hooker, whose words address domestic abuse.
