Blue Wing –Tom Russell
He had a Blue Wing tattooed on his shoulder. Well it might have been a
blue bird I don't know.
But he'd get stone drunk and talk about Alaska. Salmon boats and forty-
five below
He said he got that Blue Wing up in Walla Walla. Where his cellmate there
was a little Willy John
Willy he was once a great blues singer. And Wing and Willy wrote him up a
song:
CHORUS
He said its dark in here…can't see the sky. But I look at this Blue Wing
and I close my eyes
Then I fly away, beyond these walls… Up above the clouds, where the rain
don’t fall
On a poor man’s dreams… (yaa, On a poor man’s dreams, yaa)
Well they paroled Blue Wing in August, 1963
And he moved on pickin’ apples to the town of Wenatchee.
Winter finally caught him in a run down trailer park,
On the south side of Seattle where the days grow gray and dark
And he drank and he dreamt a vision of when the salmon still swam free
And his father’s father’s crossed that wide old Bering Sea.
And the land belonged to everyone, and there were old songs left to sing.
Now it’s narrowed down to a cheap hotel and a tattooed prison wing.
Chorus
Well he drank his way to L.A. and that’s where he died. But 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.
And halfway through the sermon you know Blue Wing began to talk
Chorus