Blue Skies

Words & Music by Irving Berlin, 1923
Recorded by Willie Nelson, 1978*


 Em        B+           Em7 A7    
Blue skies   smiling at me,

C#m7-5       G    Em7   C9  D+    G   B7
Nothing but blue skies     do I see.


Em         B+          Em7   A7
Bluebirds    singin' a song,

C#m7-5       G    Em7   C9   D+       G             
Nothing but blue birds      all day long.


Bridge:

   G           G6  Cm          G 
Never saw the sun shining so bright,

 C          G     D         G
Never saw things going so right.

   G         G6    Cm      G 
Noticing the days hurrying by,

   C            G        B7            Em  B+
When you're in love, my, my, how they fly.


Em         B+              Em7     A7
Blue days,    all of them gone --

C#m7-5      G          C9  D+       G  Gdim Dm7sus4   G
Nothing but blue skies    from now on.

* Willie Nelson's #1 country hit in 1978 was but the latest in a long series of successful versions of this standard. Introduced in the 1927 musical "Betsy" by Belle Baker, it reached the charts no less than six times that year -- by Ben Selvin (#1); George Olsen (#2); Vincent Lopez (#9); Johnny Marvin and Ed Smalle (also #9); Harry Richman (# 13); and Vaughn Deleath. It Charted in 1941 by Johnny Long (#22), then again in 1946 by both Count Basie (#8) and Benny Goodman (#9).

The lyric and guitar chord transcriptions on this site are the work of The Guitarguy and are intended for private study, research, or educational purposes only. Individual transcriptions are inspired by and and based upon the recorded versions cited, but are not necessarily exact replications of those recorded versions.