From the album "Poor Man's Dream" 1990



Intro: Am  G  Am   G


Verse 1
         C
He had a blue wing tattooed on his shoulder
                                  Dm
Might’ve been a bluebird, I don’t know 

But he’d get stone drunk and talk about Alaska
 G                             C
Salmon boats and forty-five below 


Verse 2
 C
Well he got that blue wing up in Walla Walla
                                          Dm
And his cellmate there was Little Willie John

Willie he was once a great blues singer
    G                            C
So Wing and Willie wrote’em up a song


Chorus
                      C                F
Said it’s dark in here I can’t see the sky
      C                                     G
But I look at this blue wing and I close my eye
           C                F 
And I fly away beyond these walls
             C                           G                     Am    G
Up above the clouds where the rain don’t fall on a poor man’s dream


Verse 3
         C
Well they paroled Blue Wing in August 1963
                                         Dm
And he moved north picking apples to the town of Winatchee

Then a winter finally caught him in a rundown trailer park
       G                               C
On the south side of Seattle where the days grow gray and dark


Verse 4
       C
And he drank and he dreamt a vision of when the salmon still ran free
                                      Dm
And his father’s fathers crossed that wild, old Bering Sea

And the land belonged to everyone and there were old songs yet to sing 
         G                                    C
Now it’s narrowed down to a cheap hotel and a tattooed prison wing



Chorus
                      C                F
Said it’s dark in here I can’t see the sky
      C                                     G
But I look at this blue wing and I close my eye
           C                F 
And I fly away beyond these walls
             C                           G                     Am    G
Up above the clouds where the rain don’t fall on a poor man’s dream


Am     G


Verse 5
        C
Well he drank his way to L.A. and that’s where he died
                                              Dm
No one knew his Christian name, and there was no one there to cry

But I dreamt there was a service, a preacher and an old pine box
G                                C
Halfway through the sermon, Blue Wing began to talk
       

Chorus
                      C                F
Said it’s dark in here I can’t see the sky
      C                                     G
But I look at this blue wing and I close my eye
           C                F 
And I fly away beyond these walls
             C                           G                     Am    G
Up above the clouds where the rain don’t fall on a poor man’s dream


Outro:
Am      G                    Am       G                    C
             On a poor man’s dream         On a poor man’s dream