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The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band · 1965 · Track 11
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The story behind
The blues often tells stories with few verses but plenty of meat. Look Over Yonders Wall is one of those: a guy who takes advantage of not being called to the army while others returned from war, and amuses himself with married women until the husband comes back. The song progresses like a classic twelve-bar blues, but with an unexpected twist in the lyrics: when the narrator sees the husband about to arrive, he asks for his cane to leave. There's no drama, just an irony that repeats in every version, from James "Beale Street" Clark in 1945 to those that followed.
The version by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1965 takes it to another level. Recorded at Elektra Records studios in Chicago, the track closes their debut album with a slide solo by Mike Bloomfield that gives it that raw yet refined air defining the band. Bloomfield doesn't just accompany: he builds a bridge between traditional blues and the rock that was emerging, and the song ended up at number 27 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest guitar songs. It lasted two minutes and twenty-seven seconds, but in that time it made clear that blues could be both a refuge and a warning.