Blue Wing by Tom Russell Band

Blue Wing –Tom Russell

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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-
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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
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don’t fall
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On a poor man’s dreams…  (yaa, On a poor man’s dreams,  yaa)

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Well they paroled Blue Wing in August, 1963
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And he moved on pickin’ apples to the town of Wenatchee.
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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.
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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
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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.
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A preacher and an old pine box.
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And halfway through the sermon you know Blue Wing began to talk

Chorus

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