Tom Russell - Blue Wing guitar chord

BLUE WING

Tom Russell

D

He had a blue wing tattooed on his shoulder

Em

Might've been a blue bird, I don't know

A

But, he'd get stone drunk and talk about Alaska

D

The salmon boats and forty-five below

And he got that blue wing in jail up in Wala-Wala

And his cellmate there was little Willie John

Willie, he was once a great blues singer

Wing and Willie wrote them up a song

Chorus

D G

They said, it's dark in here, can't see the sky

D A

But, I look at this blue wing and I close my eyes

D G

And I fly away, beyond these walls

D D

Up above the clouds, where the rain don't fall

D

It's a poor man's dream

Well, they paroled Blue Wing in August of 1963

And he moved North, picking apples, to the town of Wenatchee

Where the winter finally caught him in a rundown trailer park

On the south side of Seattle, where the days grow grey and dark

And he drank and he dreamt a vision, back when the salmon still ran free

And his father's father crossed that wild old Bering Sea

When the land belonged to everyone, and there were old songs yet to sing

Now it's narrowed down to a cheap hotel in a tattooed prison wing

Repeat Chorus

Well, he drank his way to LA, and that's where he died

There was no one who knew his Christian name, nobody there to cry

But, I dreamed that there was a service, had a preacher and an old pine box

And half way thru the sermon, Blue Wing began to talk

Repeat Chorus