This morning the Registry hit 500!
Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, today announced the latest additions to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.
The National Recording Registry, created by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, directs the Librarian to select 25 titles that are at least 10 years old and have cultural, artistic and historical importance to American society and the nation’s audio heritage.
Entering its sixteenth year, the Registry has reached 500 titles which showcase musical and spoken word recordings, radio broadcasts and even bird calls and recordings of telephone conversations. This is just a small portion of the Library’s vast recorded-sound collection of nearly 3 million items.
The Librarian of Congress chooses the titles based upon recommendations from the Library’s National Recording Preservation Board, (comprised of leaders in the fields of music, recorded sound and preservation), Library staff members and nominations by the American public.
This year’s selections date from 1913 to 1996 and include a full range of musical genres including avant garde (New Sounds in Electronic Music, Steve Reich, Richard Maxfield, Pauline Oliveros, 1967), Latin (Lemento Borincano, Canario y Su Grupo, 1930), folk (Alice’s Restaurant, Arlo Guthrie, 1967) pop (Rumors, Fleetwood Mac, 1977) and rap (Raising Hell, Run-DMC, 1986).
The 2017 selections are listed below. See here for more details on how to nominate recordings for next year’s Registry.
- “Dream Melody Intermezzo: Naughty Marietta”–Victor Herbert and His Orchestra (1911)
- Standing Rock Preservation Recordings—George Herzog and Yanktoni Tribe (1928)
- “Lamento Borincano”–Canario y Su Grupo (1930)
- “Sitting on Top of the World”—Mississippi Sheiks (1930)
- “The Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas”—Artur Schnabel (1932-1935)
- “If I Didn’t Care”—The Ink Spots (1939)
- Proceedings of the UN Conference on International Organization (4/25/45-6/26/45)
- “Folk Songs of the Hills”—Merle Travis (1946)
- “How I Got Over”—Clara Ward and the Ward Singers (1950)
- “Rock Around the Clock”–Bill Haley and His Comets (1954)
- “Calypso”—Harry Belafonte (1956)
- “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”—Tony Bennett (1962)
- “King Biscuit Time” (only extant episode with Sonny Boy Williamson II) (1965)
- “My Girl”—The Temptations (1965)
- “The Sound of Music” (movie soundtrack) (1965)
- “Alice’s Restaurant”—Arlo Guthrie (1967)
- ”New Sounds in Electronic Music”—Steve Reich, Richard Maxfield, Pauline Oliveros (1967)
- “An Evening with Groucho”—Groucho Marx (1972)
- “Rumors”—Fleetwood Mac (1977)
- “The Gambler”—Kenny Rogers (1978)
- “Le Freak”—Chic (1978)
- “Footloose”—Kenny Loggins (1984)
- “Raising Hell”—Run-DMC (1986)
- “Rhythm is Gonna Get You”–Gloria Estefan (1987)
- “Yo-Yo Ma Premieres”—Yo-Yo Ma and the Philadelphia Orchestra (1996)