Blue Wing Chords by Tom Russell Band

Blue Wing ?Tom Russell

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

CHORUS

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

C
Well they paroled Blue Wing in August, 1963
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And he moved on pickin? apples to the town of Wenatchee.
Dm
Winter finally caught him in a run down trailer park,
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On the south side of Seattle where the days grow gray and dark
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And he drank and he dreamt a vision of when the salmon still swam free
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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.
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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
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And there was no one there to cry.  But I dreamt there was a service.
 Dm
A preacher and an old pine box.
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And halfway through the sermon you know Blue Wing began to talk

Chorus