Buster Keaton the City of Los Angeles declared the date "Buster Keaton Day." Keaton designed and modified his own pork pie hats during his career. In 1964, he told an interviewer that in making "this particular pork pie", he "started with a good Stetson and cut it down", stiffening the brim with sugar water. The hats were often destroyed during Keaton's wild film antics; some were given away as gifts and some were snatched by souvenir hunters. Keaton said he was lucky if he used only six hats in making a film. Keaton estimated that he and his wife Eleanor made thousands
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat during the months before his death. Rahsaan Roland Kirk also composed lyrics to the song, included on his 1976 album "The Return of the 5000 Lb. Man". Goodbye Pork Pie Hat "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a jazz standard composed by Charles Mingus, originally recorded by his sextet in 1959 as listed below, and released on his album "Mingus Ah Um". Composed in E-flat minor, Mingus wrote it as an elegy for saxophonist Lester Young, who had died two months prior to the recording session, and was known to wear a pork pie hat. One of Mingus's best-known compositions, it