When Charlie speaks of Lester
 You know someone great has gone
 The sweetest swinging music man
 Had a Porkie Pig hat on
 bright star
 In a dark age
 When the bandstands had a thousand ways
 Of refusing a black man admission
 Black musician
 In those days they put him in an
 Underdog position
 Cellars and chittlins'

 When Lester took him a wife
 Arm and arm went black and white
 And some saw red
 And drove them from their hotel bed
 Love is never easy
 It's short of the hope we have for happiness
 Bright and sweet
 Love is never easy street!
 Now we are black and white
 Embracing out in the lunatic New York night
 It's very unlikely we'll be driven out of town
 Or be hung in a tree
 That's unlikely!

 Tonight these crowds
 Are happy and loud
 Children are up dancing in the streets
 In the sticky middle of the night
 Summer serenade
 Of taxi horns and fun arcades
 Where right or wrong
 Under neon
 Every feeling goes on!
 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!