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