Blue Wing, Rustic Acoustic By Gerry Hubbard

 Blue Wing, Tom Russell, By Gerry Hubbard

He had a blue wing tattooed on his shoulder
Might have been a blue bird I don't know
He’d get stone drunk and talk about Alaska
Salmon boats and 45 below

He got that blue wing in jail in Walla Walla
And his cellmate there was Little Willy John
Willy he was once a great blues singer
And winging Willy wrote him up this song.

He said it's dark in here; can't see the sky
But I look at this blue wing and I close my eyes
And I fly away,  beyond these walls
Up above the clouds, where the rain don’t fall
On a poor man's dreams.

They paroled Blue Wing in August,  1963
And he moved on picking apples to the town of Wenatchee
Til the winter finally caught him in a run down trailer park
On the South side of Seattle,  where the days are cold and dark

And he drank and he dreamed a vision when the salmon still ran free
And his father’s father crossed that wide Bering sea
And the land belonged to everyone,  there were still old songs to sing
Now it's narrowed down to a cheap hotel and a tattooed prison wing

He said it's dark in here; can't see the sky
But I look at this blue wing and I close my eyes
And I fly away,  beyond these walls
Up above the clouds where the rain don’t fall
On a poor man's dreams.

Well he drank his way to LA, that's where he died
And no one knew his Christian name,  there was no one there to cry
But I heard  there was a funeral, with a  preacher and an old pine box
Half way through the service, Blue wing began to talk.

He said it's dark in here; can't see the sky
But I look at this blue wing and I close my eyes
And I fly away,  beyond these walls
Up above the clouds where the rain don’t fall
On a poor man's dreams.