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When Charlie speaks of |
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LesterYou know someone great has gone |
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The sweetest swinging music man |
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Had a Porkie |
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Pig hat on |
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A bright star in the dark age |
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When the bandstands had a thousand ways |
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Of refusing a black man admission, black musician |
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In those days they put him in an underdog position |
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Cellars and chittlins' |
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When Lester took him a wife |
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Arm and arm went black and white and some saw red |
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And drove them from their hotel bed |
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Love is never easy |
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It's short of the hope we have for happiness |
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Bright and sweet love is never easy street |
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Now we are black and white |
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Embracing out in the lunatic |
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New York night |
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It's very unlikely we'll be driven out of town |
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Or be hung in a tree that's unlikely |
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Tonight these crowds are happy and loud |
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Children are up dancing into the streets |
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In the sticky middle of the night |
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Summer serenade of taxi horns and fun arcades |
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Where right or wrong under neon every feeling goes on |
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For you and me the sidewalk is a history book |
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And a circus dangerous clowns |
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Balancing dreadful and wonderful perceptions |
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They have been handed day by day |
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Generations on down |
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We came up from the subway on the music midnight mix |
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To Charlie's bass and |
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Lester's saxophone in taxi horns and brakes |
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Now Charlie's down in |
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Mexico with the healers |
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So the sidewalk leads us with music to two little dancers |
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Dancing outside a black bar |
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There's a sign up on the awning |
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It says, ' |
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Pork Pie Hat |
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Bar'And there's black babies dancing tonight |
