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