I've been traveling around America for the last month and a half, tracking down curious little sounds wherever I can. The most interesting musical factoid I've discovered was actually on a placard in the Smithsonian-organized Rock and Soul Museum in Memphis, and it's affected the way I've heard everything on the radio since then: Robert Johnson played polkas.

The king of the Delta blues wasn't actually just a bluesman -- but blues were what sold when he was recording, so that's the part of his repertoire he documented. He also knew and played a whole lot of polkas, square-dance tunes, ballads, and more; it seems he was particularly fond of Bing Crosby. Imagine for a moment that Johnson's polkas instead of his blues had been recorded. Would Eric Clapton have gone on to make a career of covering "Tic-Toc Polka" and "Who Stole the Kishka?" Would people pay $300 to see the Who play "Maximum R&P" at the House of Polka? Would there be a legend about Johnson selling his soul to the devil over a beer barrel?

More to the point: imagine that more of Johnson's repertoire had survived -- not just "Hellhound on My Trail" and "Terraplane Blues" but "Yes Sir, That's My Baby" and "Skip to My Lou" and "My Blue Heaven." There'd be less mystique about him -- Johnson wouldn't be thought of as some sort of primal, pure, half-supernatural blues entity but as the versatile entertainer he was.

In fact, the greatest and most innovative popular musicians of the last century have generally been the most open-minded and versatile. The New Orleans Jazz Museum notes that Buddy Bolden, the local bandleader generally acknowledged as the creator of jazz, played "all kinds of music" -- gospel, standards, pop tunes like "Ida, Sweet As Apple Cider," and traditional songs like "Home Sweet Home," as well as blues and rags. Elvis Presley's first real stroke of genius was putting the R&B tune "That's All Right Mama" on a single with the hillbilly song "Blue Moon of Kentucky." Louis Armstrong could play just about anything, and did.

But all there is of Johnson is his two recording sessions' worth of blues, and their mood, and the myths and distortions that have grown around them over 60-plus years. The take-home lesson from this is to be wary of thinking that recordings -- more than ever finessed, A&R'ed, homogenized, and one-note-hammering -- represent all of an artist's capabilities. Major musicians' careers used to be documented in a continuous flow of new songs; with the death of singles, everything centers on album-release dates, and with the exception of maybe Jay-Z and a few other prolific types, pop musicians get to make one grand stylistic statement every two or three years. (And if one of those statements turns out to be a hit, the next one is almost always the same.) At the MTV Video Music Awards, Macy Gray's dress announced in bold type that her new album would be out September 18. It was embarrassing to see, and kind of awful to consider -- the music business is such that if people don't buy her album that day, her career's in trouble. Can Macy Gray make a record that doesn't sound like On How Life Is, part #2 or #3 or #10? We might not know for a few more years. If the new album is too successful or not successful enough, we might not ever know.

The other thing I've noticed in my trip across the country is the depressing homogeneity of radio -- aside from some fine college-radio stations and a kick-ass norteño station or two in West Texas, almost everything I've tuned in is either the bland, computer-driven, monopolistic void of Clear Channel Communications or an attempt to imitate it. Radio formats are more inflexible than they've been in decades; every musician is limited to a single style, and often to a single song for months on end. There are no more regional hits. There's no reason for pop musicians to branch out any more. If there were a new Robert Johnson, he'd never play a polka at all -- he'd just keep looping around to the same crossroads, again and again, until the world grew tired of him.

Issue Date: September 21 - 27, 2001