Tom Russell Band – Blue Wing tab

Blue Wing –Tom Russell

C
He had a Blue Wing tattooed on his shoulder.  Well it might have been a
                  Dm
blue bird I don't know.
G
But he'd get stone drunk and talk about Alaska.  Salmon boats and forty-
      C
five below
C
He said he got that Blue Wing up in Walla Walla.  Where his cellmate there
              Dm
was a little Willy John
Dm		                              G
Willy he was once a great blues singer.  And Wing and Willy wrote him up a
 C
song:

CHORUS

C                                      F            C
He said its dark in here…can't see the sky.   But I look at this Blue Wing
        G
and I close my eyes
C	             	     F	                  C
Then I fly away, beyond these walls… Up above the clouds, where the rain
     G
don’t fall
	     Am	           G		  Am	         G
On a poor man’s dreams…  (yaa, On a poor man’s dreams,  yaa)

C
Well they paroled Blue Wing in August, 1963
C                                              Dm
And he moved on pickin’ apples to the town of Wenatchee.
Dm
Winter finally caught him in a run down trailer park,
Dm        G                             C
On the south side of Seattle where the days grow gray and dark
C
And he drank and he dreamt a vision of when the salmon still swam free
C                                       Dm
And his father’s father’s crossed that wide old Bering Sea.
Dm
And the land belonged to everyone, and there were old songs left to sing.
Dm          G                                     C
Now it’s narrowed down to a cheap hotel and a tattooed prison wing.

Chorus
C
Well he drank his way to L.A. and that’s where he died.  But no one knew his Christian name
C			      Dm
And there was no one there to cry.  But I dreamt there was a service.
 Dm
A preacher and an old pine box.
Dm     G                                    C
And halfway through the sermon you know Blue Wing began to talk

Chorus