SLSL "Low-Lands" porkpie hat

[pynchonoid]

Whatever else it is, it may be another of Pynchon's
jazz allusions, too.


"Goodbye Porkpie Hat"
"Charles Mingus' elegy for saxophonist Lester Young.
Lester almost always wore a porkpie hat."
MIDI file:
<http://www.songtrellis.com/sounds/viewer$296>
chart:
<http://www.songtrellis.com/picture$713>

pix:
<http://www.dadshats.com/ozpinpor2.html>


<http://www.busterkeaton.com/howto.htm>
Buster Keaton, interviewed in 1964 at the Movieland
Wax Museum
by Henry Gris 
"In those days,almost every comedian you saw affected
a derby hat. Even Harold Lloyd, when he was playing
his Lonesome Luke character in 1917, wore a derby -
which he later deserted for his signature straw hat
and horn-rimmed glasses. So I decided to get a hat
that was my very own. I knew straw was too fragile for
my kind of antics, so I chose felt and designed this
particular porkpie. I took a good Stetson and cut it
down, then I stiffened the brim with sugar water. My
recipe calls for three heaping teaspoons of granulated
sugar in a teacup of warm water. You wet the top and
bottom of the brim, and then smooth it out on a clean,
hard surface and let it dry to a good stiffness. I did
the earliest ones myself, always - and then I trained
my wife. Now she does them for me. In the old days,
the Stetsons cost me $3.50 each- I pay $12.50 for the
same one now. It gets to be expensive - as I've used
up thousands of them through the years. In the first
place, I used to do more water stuff - stunts where I
got dumped into water - than most comedians. And felt
disintegrates if you get it wet enough! So the
mortality was high. I was lucky if I only used half a
dozen in each picture. Then people want them for
souvenirs - they snatch them off my head, so I have to
have extras on hand. Then, when I started making
feature pictures, they showed them at the biggest city
theaters, and always had all the usherettes wearing my
porkpie hats - somehow I never had one returned to
me!"


-Doug



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<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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