"Runnin' Blue" is a song by the American rock band The Doors, the seventh track on their album The Soft Parade. In 1969 it peaked at #64 on Billboard magazine's Pop Singles chart.
Robby Krieger shares vocals with Morrison for the chorus of the track, one of the few songs before Morrison's death to do so.
It is also notable for Jim Morrison's introduction, a tribute to the then recently-deceased Otis Redding:
Poor Otis, dead and gone
Left me here to sing his song
Pretty little girl with the red dress on
Poor Otis, dead and gone.
The lyrics and melody of this brief a cappella introduction was taken from a Lead Belly track entitled Po' Howard (or Poor Howard on some compilations) where Jim replaced the name 'Howard' with 'Otis'. Sometimes this introduction was played at the end of another Doors' song, "When the Music's Over". There are other lyrical references to Otis Redding's song "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" throughout this song.
Notable bluegrass musician Jesse McReynolds plays the mandolin in this song.
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Famous quotes containing the word blue:
“It was beginning winter,
An in-between time,
The landscape still partly brown:
The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind,
Above the blue snow.”
—Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)