List of recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry
Encyclopedia
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording Preservation Board
National Recording Preservation Board
The United States National Recording Preservation Board selects recorded sounds for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. The National Recording Registry was initiated to maintain and preserve "sound recordings that are culturally, historically or aesthetically...

, whose members are appointed by the Librarian of Congress. The recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry form a registry of recording
Recording
Recording is the process of capturing data or translating information to a recording format stored on some storage medium, which is often referred to as a record or, if an auditory medium, a recording....

s selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board
National Recording Preservation Board
The United States National Recording Preservation Board selects recorded sounds for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. The National Recording Registry was initiated to maintain and preserve "sound recordings that are culturally, historically or aesthetically...

 for preservation in the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

.

The legislative intent of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 was to develop a national program to guard America's sound recording heritage. The Act resulted in the formations of the National Recording Registry, The National Recording Preservation Board and a fund-raising foundation to aid their efforts. The act established the Registry specifically for the purpose of maintaining and preserving sound recordings and collections of sound recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. Beginning in 2002, the National Recording Preservation Board began selecting nominated recordings each year to be preserved.

The first four yearly lists included 50 selections. However, since 2006, 25 recordings have been selected annually. Thus, a total of 300 recordings have been preserved in the Registry . Each year, open nominations are accepted until July 1 for inclusion in that year's list of selections to be announced the following spring. Thus, nominations for the 2010 list to be announced in the spring of 2011 had to be submitted by July 1, 2010 although nominations are accepted year round. Nominations are made in the following categories:

  • Blues
  • Broadway/Musical Theatre/Soundtrack
  • Cajun/Zydeco/"Swamp"
  • Children's recordings
  • Choral
  • Classical
  • Comedy/Novelty
  • Country/Bluegrass
  • Documentary/Broadcast/Spoken Word
  • Environmental
  • Field
  • Folk/Ethnic
  • Gospel/Spiritual
  • Heavy Metal
  • Jazz
  • Latin
  • Pop (pre-1955)
  • Pop (post-1955)
  • R&B
  • Radio
  • Rap/Hip-hop
  • Rock
  • Technology

Each yearly list has often included a few recordings that have also been selected for inclusion in the holdings of the National Archives
National Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives...

' audiovisual collection. Those recordings on the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry that are of a political nature will tend to overlap with the audiovisual collection of the National Archives. The list shows overlapping items and whether the National Archives has an original or a copy of the recording.


Selection criteria

The criteria for selection are as follows:
  • Recordings selected for the National Recording Registry are those that are culturally, historically or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States.
  • For the purposes of recording selection, "sound recordings" are defined as works that result from the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds, but not including the sound component of a moving image work, unless it is available as an autonomous sound recording or is the only extant component of the work.
  • Recordings may be a single item or group of related items; published or unpublished; and may contain music, non-music, spoken word, or broadcast sound.
  • Recordings will not be considered for inclusion into the National Recording Registry if no copy of the recording exists.
  • No recording should be denied inclusion into the National Recording Registry because that recording has already been preserved.
  • No recording is eligible for inclusion into the National Recording Registry until ten years after the recording's creation.

2002

On January 27, 2003, the following 50 selections were announced by the National Recording Preservation Board.

Recording or collection Performer or agent Year National
Archives
Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

 exhibition recordings (Group of three cylinders
Phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...

):
  • "Around the World on the Phonograph"
  • "The Pattison Waltz"
  • "Fifth Regiment March"
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

1888–1889
Passamaquoddy Indians field recording
Field recording
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside of a recording studio. The recording is typically recorded in the same channel format as the desired result, for instance, stereo recording equipment will yield a stereo product...

s
Recorded by Jesse Walter Fewkes
J. Walter Fewkes
Jesse Walter Fewkes was an American anthropologist, archaeologist, writer and naturalist. He was born in Newton, Massachusetts, and initially trained as a zoologist at Harvard University...

1890
"Stars and Stripes Forever"
(Berliner Gramophone
Berliner Gramophone
Berliner Gramophone was an early record label, the first company to produce disc "gramophone records" .-History:...

 disc recording)
Military Band 1897
Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

 cylinder recordings (the Mapleson Cylinders
Mapleson Cylinders
The Mapleson Cylinders are a group of more than 100 phonograph cylinders recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera, primarily in the years 1901–1903, by the Met librarian Lionel Mapleson ....

)
Lionel Mapleson and the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

1900–1903
Ragtime
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...

 compositions piano roll
Piano roll
A piano roll is a music storage medium used to operate a player piano, piano player or reproducing piano. A piano roll is a continuous roll of paper with perforations punched into it. The peforations represent note control data...

s
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin was an American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was later dubbed "The King of Ragtime". During his brief career, Joplin wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas...

1900s


|-
|1895 Atlanta Exposition speech
Atlanta Compromise
The Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition Speech was an address on the topic of race relations given by Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895...


|Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...


|1906 recreation
||copy
|-
|"Vesti la giubba
Vesti la giubba
"Vesti la giubba" is a famous tenor aria from Ruggero Leoncavallo's 1892 opera Pagliacci. "Vesti la giubba" is the conclusion of the first act, when Canio discovers his wife's infidelity, but must nevertheless prepare for his performance as Pagliaccio the clown because "the show must go on".The...

" from Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Pagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...


|Enrico Caruso
|1907
|
|-
|"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" is a historic African-American spiritual. The first recording was in 1909, by the Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University....

"
|Fisk Jubilee Singers
Fisk Jubilee Singers
The Fisk Jubilee Singers are an African-American a cappella ensemble, consisting of students at Fisk University. The first group was organized in 1871 to tour and raise funds for their college. Their early repertoire consisted mostly of traditional spirituals, but included some Stephen Foster songs...


|1909
|
|-
| Lovey's Trinidad String Band
| Lovey's Trinidad String Band
|1912
|
|-
|"Casey at the Bat
Casey at the Bat
"Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888" is a baseball poem written in 1888 by Ernest Thayer. First published in The San Francisco Examiner on June 3, 1888, it was later popularized by DeWolf Hopper in many vaudeville performances.The poem was originally published...

"
|DeWolf Hopper
DeWolf Hopper
William DeWolf Hopper was an American actor, singer, comedian, and theatrical producer. Although a star of the musical stage, he was best-known for performing the popular baseball poem Casey at the Bat. -Biography:...


|1915
|
|-
|"Tiger Rag
Tiger Rag
"Tiger Rag" is a jazz standard, originally recorded and copyrighted by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1917. It is one of the most recorded jazz compositions of all time.-Origins:...

"
|Original Dixieland Jazz Band
Original Dixieland Jass Band
The Original Dixieland Jass Band were a New Orleans, Dixieland jazz band that made the first jazz recordings in early 1917. Their "Livery Stable Blues" became the first jazz single ever issued. The group composed and made the first recordings of many jazz standards, the most famous being Tiger Rag...


|1918
|
|-
|"Arkansas Traveler
The Arkansas Traveler (song)
"The Arkansas Traveler" was the state song of Arkansas from 1949 to 1963; it has been the state historical song since 1987. The music was composed in the 19th century by Colonel Sanford C...

" and "Sallie Gooden"
|Eck Robertson
Eck Robertson
Alexander "Eck" Robertson was an American fiddle player, mostly known for commercially recording the first country music songs in 1922 with Henry Gilliland.-Early life:...


|1922
|
|-
|"Downhearted Blues
Downhearted Blues
"Downhearted Blues" is a blues song composed by Alberta Hunter and Lovie Austin. The first line immediately sets the theme for the song: "Gee but it's hard to love someone when that someone don't love you"....

"
|Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...


|1923
|
|-
|Rhapsody in Blue
Rhapsody in Blue
Rhapsody in Blue is a musical composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and jazz band written in 1924, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects....


|George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...

, piano; Paul Whiteman
Paul Whiteman
Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and press notices often referred to him as the "King of Jazz"...

 Orchestra
|1924
|
|-
|Louis Armstrong's
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

 Hot Five
Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five
The Hot Five was Louis Armstrong's first jazz recording band led under his own name.It was a typical New Orleans jazz band in instrumentation, consisting of trumpet, clarinet, and trombone backed by a rhythm section...

 and Hot Seven
Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven
Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven was a jazz studio group organized to make a series of recordings for Okeh Records in Chicago, Illinois in May 1927. Some of the personnel also recorded with Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, including Johnny Dodds , Lil Armstrong , Johnny St. Cyr...

 recordings
|Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven
|1925–1928
|
|-
|Victor Talking Machine Company
Victor Talking Machine Company
The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....

 sessions in Bristol
Bristol, Tennessee
Bristol is a city in Sullivan County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 26,702 at the 2010 census. It is the twin city of Bristol, Virginia, which lies directly across the state line between Tennessee and Virginia. The boundaries of both cities run parallel to each other along State...

, Tennessee
|Carter Family
Carter Family
The Carter Family was a traditional American folk music group that recorded between 1927 and 1956. Their music had a profound impact on bluegrass, country, Southern Gospel, pop and rock musicians as well as on the U.S. folk revival of the 1960s. They were the first vocal group to become country...

, Jimmie Rodgers
Jimmie Rodgers (country singer)
James Charles Rodgers , known as Jimmie Rodgers, was an American country singer in the early 20th century known most widely for his rhythmic yodeling...

, Ernest Stoneman
Ernest Stoneman
Ernest Van "Pop" Stoneman ranked among the prominent recording artists of country music's first commercial decade.-Biography:...

, and others
|1927
|
|-
| Harvard Vocarium record series
|T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

 and others
|1930–1940s
|
|-
|Highlander Center
Highlander Research and Education Center
The Highlander Research and Education Center, formerly known as the Highlander Folk School, is a social justice leadership training school and cultural center located in New Market, Tennessee. Founded in 1932 by activist Myles Horton, educator Don West, and Methodist minister James A. Dombrowski,...

 Field Recordings Collection
|Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....

, Esau Jenkins
Esau Jenkins
Esau Jenkins was the founder/overseer of Haut Gap Middle School in Charleston County School District. This school once was a high school because back then Jim Crow laws was going on and that school were for African Americans in Johns Island, South Carolina...

 and others
|1930s–1980s
|
|-
|Bell Laboratories
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

 experimental stereo recordings
|Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...

; Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...

, conductor
|1931–1932
|
|-
| "Fireside Chats
Fireside chats
The fireside chats were a series of thirty evening radio addresses given by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944.-Origin of radio address:...

" radio broadcasts
Radio programming
Radio programming is the Broadcast programming of a Radio format or content that is organized for Commercial broadcasting and Public broadcasting radio stations....


|Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...


|1933–1944
||original
|-
| "New Music Quarterly" recordings series
|Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...

, producer
|1934–1949
|
|-
| Description of the crash of the Hindenburg
|Herbert Morrison
Herbert Morrison (announcer)
Herbert Morrison was an American radio reporter best known for his dramatic report of the Hindenburg disaster, a catastrophic fire that destroyed the LZ 129 Hindenburg zeppelin on May 6, 1937, killing 36 people.-Hindenburg disaster:...


|May 6, 1937
||original
|-
| "Who's on First?
Who's on First?
Who's on First? is a vaudeville comedy routine made most famous by Abbott and Costello. In Abbott and Costello's version, the premise of the routine is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team to Costello, but their names and nicknames can be interpreted as non-responsive answers...

"
Earliest existing radio broadcast
Radio programming
Radio programming is the Broadcast programming of a Radio format or content that is organized for Commercial broadcasting and Public broadcasting radio stations....

 version

|Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...


|March, 1938
|
|-
| "War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds (radio)
The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938, and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker...

"
| Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

 and the Mercury Theatre
Mercury Theatre
The Mercury Theatre was a theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and John Houseman. After a string of live theatrical productions, in 1938 the Mercury Theatre progressed into their best-known period as The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a radio series that included one of the...


|October 30, 1938
||copy
|-
| "God Bless America
God Bless America
"God Bless America" is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin in 1918 and revised by him in 1938. The later version has notably been recorded by Kate Smith, becoming her signature song ....

"
Radio broadcast premiere
|Kate Smith
Kate Smith
Kathryn Elizabeth "Kate" Smith was an American Popular singer, best known for her rendition of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". Smith had a radio, television, and recording career spanning five decades, which reached its pinnacle in the 1940s.Smith was born in Greenville, Virginia...


|November 11, 1938
|
|-
| The Cradle Will Rock
The Cradle Will Rock
The Cradle Will Rock is a 1937 musical by Marc Blitzstein. Originally a part of the Federal Theatre Project, it was directed by Orson Welles, and produced by John Houseman. The show was recorded and released on seven 78-rpm discs in 1938, making it the first cast album recording.The musical is a...


(Marc Blitzstein
Marc Blitzstein
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...

)
|Original cast
|1938
|
|-
| The John
John Lomax
John Avery Lomax was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist and folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk songs...

 and Ruby Lomax
Ruby Terrill Lomax
Ruby Terrill Lomax was born and raised in Denton, Texas, just outside of Dallas, Ruby Terrill earned degrees at state colleges, setting a record at the University of Texas at Austin for the highest grade average yet achieved by a woman at the university...

 Southern States Recording Trip
|John and Ruby Lomax
|1939
|
|-
| Grand Ole Opry
Grand Ole Opry
The Grand Ole Opry is a weekly country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, that has presented the biggest stars of that genre since 1925. It is also among the longest-running broadcasts in history since its beginnings as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on WSM-AM...


First network radio broadcast
|Uncle Dave Macon
Uncle Dave Macon
Uncle Dave Macon , born David Harrison Macon—also known as "The Dixie Dewdrop"—was an American banjo player, singer, songwriter, and comedian...

, Roy Acuff
Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the King of Country Music, Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown" format to the star singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.Acuff...

, and others
|October 14, 1939
|
|-
| "Strange Fruit
Strange Fruit
"Strange Fruit" is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who released her first recording of it in 1939, the year she first sang it. Written by the teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem, it exposed American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had occurred...

"
|Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...


|1939
|
|-
| Blanton-Webster era recordings
| Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...

 Orchestra
|1940–1942
|
|-
|Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

 and Joseph Szigeti
Joseph Szigeti
Joseph Szigeti was a Hungarian violinist.Born into a musical family, he spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania. He quickly proved himself to be a child prodigy on the violin, and moved to Budapest with his father to study with the renowned pedagogue Jenő Hubay...

 in Concert at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...


|Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

, piano; Joseph Szigeti
Joseph Szigeti
Joseph Szigeti was a Hungarian violinist.Born into a musical family, he spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania. He quickly proved himself to be a child prodigy on the violin, and moved to Budapest with his father to study with the renowned pedagogue Jenő Hubay...

, violin
|1940
|
|-
| The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring, original French title Le sacre du printemps , is a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; and concept, set design and costumes by Nicholas Roerich...


|Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

 conducting the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...


|1940
|
|-
| "White Christmas
White Christmas (song)
"White Christmas" is an Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the version sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide.Accounts vary as...

"
|Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....


|1942
|
|-
| "This Land Is Your Land
This Land Is Your Land
"This Land Is Your Land" is one of the United States' most famous folk songs. Its lyrics were written by Woody Guthrie in 1940 based on an existing melody, in response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America", which Guthrie considered unrealistic and complacent. Tired of hearing Kate Smith sing it on...

"
|Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...


|1944
|
|-
| D-Day
D-Day
D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...

 radio address to
the Allied Nations
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...


|Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...


|June 6, 1944
||original
|-
| "Ko Ko
Ko Ko
Ko Ko...Koli Kothi is an upcoming Kannada romance film genre starring Srinagar Kitty and Priyamani in the lead roles. The film is directed by Chandru. Ramana Gogula is the music director of the film. Bhasker and Adhi have jointly produced the venture under Bharani films.- Cast :* Srinagar Kitty*...

" ("Ko-Ko")
|Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....

, Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

, Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

, and others
|1945
|
|-
| "Blue Moon of Kentucky
Blue Moon of Kentucky
"Blue Moon of Kentucky" is a waltz written in 1946 by bluegrass musician Bill Monroe and recorded by his band, The Blue Grass Boys. The song has since been recorded by many artists, including Elvis Presley....

"
|Bill Monroe
Bill Monroe
William Smith Monroe was an American musician who created the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader...

 and the Blue Grass Boys
|1947
|
|-
| "How High the Moon
How High the Moon
"How High the Moon" is a jazz standard with lyrics by Nancy Hamilton and music by Morgan Lewis. It was first featured in the 1940 Broadway revue Two for the Show, where it was sung by Alfred Drake and Frances Comstock....

"
|Les Paul
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...

 and Mary Ford
Mary Ford
Mary Ford , born Iris Colleen Summers, was an American vocalist and guitarist, comprising half of the husband-and-wife musical team Les Paul and Mary Ford. Between 1950 and 1954, the couple had 16 top-ten hits...


|1951
|
|-
| Sun Records sessions
Elvis Presley's Sun recordings
Elvis Presley's Sun recordings were made by Elvis Presley at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A. between 1953 and 1955. The recordings were produced by Sam Phillips. Memphis is a melting pot of many types of music: both black music and white music , the recordings reflect these influences...


|Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....


|1954–1955
|
|-
| Songs for Young Lovers
Songs for Young Lovers
Songs for Young Lovers is the fifth Studio Album by Frank Sinatra, his first released for Capitol Records. It was released as a 10" LP as a set of eight songs....


|Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...


|1954
|
|-
| "Dance Mania"
|Tito Puente
Tito Puente
Tito Puente, , born Ernesto Antonio Puente, was a Latin jazz and Salsa musician. The son of native Puerto Ricans Ernest and Ercilia Puente, of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Puente is often credited as "El Rey de los Timbales" and "The King of Latin Music"...


|1958
|
|-
| Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released August 17, 1959, on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City on March 2 and April 22, 1959...


|Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

, John Coltrane
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans
Bill Evans
William John Evans, known as Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines influenced a generation of pianists including: Chick Corea, Herbie...

, and others
|1959
|
|-
| "What'd I Say," parts 1 and 2
|Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...


|1959
|
|-
| "I Have a Dream
I Have a Dream
"I Have a Dream" is a 17-minute public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on August 28, 1963, in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination...

" speech
|Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...


|August 28, 1963
||copy
|-
| The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in May 1963 by Columbia Records. Whereas his debut album Bob Dylan had contained only two original songs, Freewheelin initiated the process of writing contemporary words to traditional melodies....


|Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...


|1963
|
|-
| "Respect
Respect (song)
"Respect" is a song written and originally released by Stax recording artist Otis Redding in 1965. "Respect" became a 1967 hit and signature song for R&B singer Aretha Franklin. The music in the two versions is significantly different, and through a few minor changes in the lyrics, the stories told...

"
|Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Although known for her soul recordings and referred to as The Queen of Soul, Franklin is also adept at jazz, blues, R&B, gospel music, and rock. Rolling Stone magazine ranked her atop its list of The Greatest Singers of All...


|1967
|
|-
| Philomel
Philomel
Philomel is the name of a musical instrument similar to the violin, but having four steel, wire strings.The philomel has a body with incurvations similar to those of the guitar; therefore, without corner blocks, the outline of the upper lobe forms a wavy shoulder reminiscent of the viols but more...

: For Soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...


| Bethany Beardslee, recorded soprano,
and synthesized
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...

 sound
|1971
|
|-
| Precious Lord: New Recordings of the Great Gospel Songs of Thomas A. Dorsey
Precious Lord: New Recordings of the Great Songs of Thomas A. Dorsey
Precious Lord: New Recordings of the Great Songs of Thomas A. Dorsey is a 1973 album by Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey. The recording features Dorsey's account of his life, as well as contemporary performances of his greatest works...


| Thomas A. Dorsey
Thomas A. Dorsey
Thomas Andrew Dorsey was known as "the father of black gospel music" and was at one time so closely associated with the field that songs written in the new style were sometimes known as "dorseys." Earlier in his life he was a leading blues pianist known as Georgia Tom.As formulated by Dorsey,...

,
Marion Williams
Marion Williams
Marion Williams was an American gospel singer.-Early years:Marion Williams was born in Miami, Florida, to a religiously devout mother and musically inclined father. She left school when she was nine years old to help support the family, and worked as a maid, a nurse, and in factories and...

,
and others
|1973
|
|-
| Crescent City Living Legends Collection
(New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, often known as Jazz Fest, is an annual celebration of the music and culture of New Orleans and Louisiana...

 Archive/WWOZ
WWOZ
WWOZ is a non-profit community-supported radio station in New Orleans, Louisiana broadcasting at 90.7 FM. The station specializes in music from or relating to the cultural heritage of New Orleans and the surrounding region of Louisiana.-Programming:...

 New Orleans)

|
|1973–1990
|
|-
| "The Message"
|Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was an influential American hip-hop group formed in the South Bronx of New York City in 1978. Composed of one DJ and five rappers Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was an influential American hip-hop group formed in the South Bronx of New York City in...


|1982
|
|}

2003

In March 2004, the following 50 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board.
Recording or collection Performer or agent Year National
Archives
"The Lord’s Prayer
Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his...

" and
"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is a popular English nursery rhyme. The lyrics are from an early nineteenth-century English poem, "The Star" by Jane Taylor. The poem, which is in couplet form, was first published in 1806 in Rhymes for the Nursery, a collection of poems by Taylor and her sister Ann...

"
Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner or Emil Berliner was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for developing the disc record gramophone...

c. 1890
"Honolulu Cake Walk" Vess Ossman
Vess Ossman
Vess Ossman was a leading 5-string banjoist and popular recording artist of the early 20th century.-Biography:...

1898
Victor Releases
Victor Talking Machine Company
The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....

Bert Williams
Bert Williams
Egbert Austin "Bert" Williams was one of the preeminent entertainers of the Vaudeville era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time. He was by far the best-selling black recording artist before 1920...

 and
George Walker
1901
"You're a Grand Old Rag [Flag]" Billy Murray
Billy Murray (singer)
William Thomas "Billy" Murray was one of the most popular singers in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century...

1906
Chippewa/Ojibwe
Ojibwa
The Ojibwe or Chippewa are among the largest groups of Native Americans–First Nations north of Mexico. They are divided between Canada and the United States. In Canada, they are the third-largest population among First Nations, surpassed only by Cree and Inuit...

 Cylinder
Phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...

 Collection
Frances Densmore
Frances Densmore
Frances Densmore was an American ethnographer and ethnomusicologist, both being divisions of study within anthropology. She was born in Red Wing, Minnesota, and specialized in Native American music and culture....

1907–1910
The Bubble Book
(the first Bubble Book)
1917
"Cross of Gold"
Speech re-enactment
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...

1921
Cylinder recordings
Phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...


of African-American music
Guy B. Johnson
Guy Benton Johnson
Guy B. Johnson was a sociologist and social anthropologist. He was a distinguished student of black culture in the rural South and a pioneer advocate of racial equality.-Life:...

1920s
"OKeh Laughing Record" Lucie Bernardo and Otto Rathke 1922
"Adeste Fideles
Adeste Fideles
"Adeste Fideles" is a hymn tune attributed to English hymnist John Francis Wade . The text itself has unclear beginnings, and may have been written in the 13th century by John of Reading, though it has been concluded that Wade was probably the author.The original four verses of the hymn were...

"
Associated Glee Clubs of America 1925
Cajun
Cajun
Cajuns are an ethnic group mainly living in the U.S. state of Louisiana, consisting of the descendants of Acadian exiles...

-Creole
Louisiana Creole people
Louisiana Creole people refers to those who are descended from the colonial settlers in Louisiana, especially those of French and Spanish descent. The term was first used during colonial times by the settlers to refer to those who were born in the colony, as opposed to those born in the Old World...

 Columbia
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

 releases
Amadé Ardoin
Amédé Ardoin
Amédé Ardoin was an American Louisiana Creole musician, known for his high singing voice and virtuosity on the Creole/Cajun Accordion...

 and
Dennis McGee
1929
"Goodnight, Irene
Goodnight, Irene
"Goodnight, Irene" or "Irene, Goodnight," is a 20th century American folk standard, written in 3/4 time, first recorded by American blues musician Huddie 'Lead Belly' Ledbetter in 1932....

"
Lead Belly 1933
"Every Man a King" speech Huey P. Long
Huey Long
Huey Pierce Long, Jr. , nicknamed The Kingfish, served as the 40th Governor of Louisiana from 1928–1932 and as a U.S. Senator from 1932 to 1935. A Democrat, he was noted for his radical populist policies. Though a backer of Franklin D...

February 23, 1935 copy
"He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands" Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson was an African-American contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century...

1936
The Complete Recordings
The Complete Recordings (Robert Johnson album)
The Complete Recordings is a compilation album by American blues musician Robert Johnson, released August 28, 1990 on Columbia Records. The album's recordings were recorded in two sessions in Dallas and San Antonio, Texas for the American Record Company during 1936 and 1937. Most of the songs were...

Robert Johnson 1936–1937
Interviews conducted by Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...

Jelly Roll Morton
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe , known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer....

, Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...

1938
Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...

1938
Complete day of radio broadcasting, WJSV
WJSV
-Educational WJSV :WJSV is a student-run radio station in Morristown, New Jersey. WJSV is run by students of Morristown High School and owned by the Morris School District. WJSV, first bought by the Morris School District in 1971, generally broadcasts Monday through Friday from 7:30 am to 10:00 pm...

 (Washington, D.C.)
WJSV
WJSV
-Educational WJSV :WJSV is a student-run radio station in Morristown, New Jersey. WJSV is run by students of Morristown High School and owned by the Morris School District. WJSV, first bought by the Morris School District in 1971, generally broadcasts Monday through Friday from 7:30 am to 10:00 pm...

, Washington, D.C.
September 21, 1939 original
"New San Antonio Rose
New San Antonio Rose
"San Antonio Rose"/"New San Antonio Rose" was the signature song of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. "San Antonio Rose" was an instrumental song written by Bob Wills, who first recorded it with the Playboys in 1938. Band members added lyrics and it was retitled "New San Antonio Rose"...

"
Bob Wills
Bob Wills
James Robert Wills , better known as Bob Wills, was an American Western Swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader, considered by music authorities as the co-founder of Western Swing and universally known as the pioneering King of Western Swing.Bob Wills' name will forever be associated with...

 and His Texas Playboys
1940
World Series
World Series
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball, played between the American League and National League champions since 1903. The winner of the World Series championship is determined through a best-of-seven playoff and awarded the Commissioner's Trophy...

-Game Four
New York Yankees
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...


vs. Brooklyn Dodgers
October 5, 1941
Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

 B-Minor Mass
Mass in B Minor (Bach)
The Mass in B minor is a musical setting of the complete Latin Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach. The work was one of Bach's last, not completed in until 1749, the year before his death in 1750. Much of the Mass consisted of music that Bach had composed earlier: the Kyrie and Gloria sections had been...

Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw (conductor)
Robert Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Shaw received 14 Grammy awards, four ASCAP awards for service to contemporary music, the first Guggenheim Fellowship...

 Chorale
1947
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

 String Quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...

s
Budapest Quartet
Budapest Quartet
The Budapest String Quartet was a string quartet in existence from 1917 to 1967. It originally consisted of three Hungarians and a Dutchman; at the end, the quartet consisted of four Russians. A number of recordings were made for HMV/Victor through 1938; from 1940 through 1967 it recorded for...

1940–1950
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...


(George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...

)
Original cast 1940, 1942
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...


(Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...

)
Original cast 1943
Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...

Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...

, Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen
Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee...

,
José Ferrer
José Ferrer
José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón , best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film director...

, and others
1943
The Four Seasons
The Four Seasons (Vivaldi)
The Four Seasons is a set of four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Composed in 1723, The Four Seasons is Vivaldi's best-known work, and is among the most popular pieces of Baroque music. The texture of each concerto is varied, each resembling its respective season...

(Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...

)
Louis Kaufman and
the Concert Hall String Orchestra
1947
Piano Sonata No. 2
Piano Sonata No. 2 (Ives)
The Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840–60 by Charles Ives, commonly known as the Concord Sonata, is one of the composer's best-known and most highly regarded pieces....

, "Concord
Piano Sonata No. 2 (Ives)
The Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840–60 by Charles Ives, commonly known as the Concord Sonata, is one of the composer's best-known and most highly regarded pieces....

"
(Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...

)
John Kirkpatrick 1948
Steam locomotive
Steam locomotive
A steam locomotive is a railway locomotive that produces its power through a steam engine. These locomotives are fueled by burning some combustible material, usually coal, wood or oil, to produce steam in a boiler, which drives the steam engine...

 recordings, 6 vol.
O. Winston Link
O. Winston Link
Ogle Winston Link , known commonly as O. Winston Link, was an American photographer. He is best known for his black-and-white photography and sound recordings of the last days of steam locomotive railroading on the Norfolk & Western in the United States in the late 1950s...

1957–1977
Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition is a suite in ten movements composed for piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.The suite is Mussorgsky's most famous piano composition, and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists...

(Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...

)
Rafael Kubelík
Rafael Kubelík
Rafael Jeroným Kubelík was a Czech conductor and composer.-Early life:Kubelík was born in Býchory, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, today's Czech Republic. He was the sixth child of the Bohemian violinist Jan Kubelík, whom the younger Kubelík described as "a kind of god to me." His mother was a Hungarian...

 conducting
the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1891, the Symphony makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival...

1951
"Problems of the American Home" Billy Graham
Billy Graham
William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian evangelist. As of April 25, 2010, when he met with Barack Obama, Graham has spent personal time with twelve United States Presidents dating back to Harry S. Truman, and is number seven on Gallup's list of admired people for...

1954
Goldberg Variations
Goldberg Variations
The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, is a work for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, the work is considered to be one of the most important examples of variation form...

 (Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

)
Glenn Gould
Glenn Gould
Glenn Herbert Gould was a Canadian pianist who became one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century. He was particularly renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach...

1955
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook is a 1956 album by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, accompanied by a studio orchestra conducted and arranged by Buddy Bregman, focusing on the songs of Cole Porter....

Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...

1956
"Roll Over Beethoven
Roll Over Beethoven
"Roll Over Beethoven" is a 1956 hit single by Chuck Berry originally released on Chess Records, with "Drifting Heart" as the B-side. The lyrics of the song mention rock and roll and the desire for rhythm and blues to replace classical music...

"
Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...

1956
Brilliant Corners
Brilliant Corners
Brilliant Corners is a 1957 album by jazz musician Thelonious Monk. It was his third album for the Riverside label and the first, for this label, to include his own compositions. The complex title track required over a dozen takes in the studio, and is considered one of his most difficult...

Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...

1956
Complete Ring Cycle
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...

(Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

)
Georg Solti
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...

 and
the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
The Vienna Philharmonic is an orchestra in Austria, regularly considered one of the finest in the world....

1958–1965
Winds in Hi-Fi Eastman Wind Ensemble
Eastman Wind Ensemble
The Eastman Wind Ensemble is an American concert band founded by Frederick Fennell at the Eastman School of Music in 1952. It is often credited with helping popularize wind music. Through the group, Fennell redefined wind ensemble to refer to a specific kind of wind band with only one player per...


with Frederick Fennell
Frederick Fennell
Frederick Fennell was an internationally recognized conductor, and one of the primary figures in promoting the wind ensemble as a performing group. He was also influential as a band pedagogue, and greatly affected the field of music education in the USA and abroad...

1958
Mingus Ah Um
Mingus Ah Um
Mingus Ah Um is a jazz album by Charles Mingus, recorded and released on Columbia Records in 1959. It was his first album recorded for Columbia. The cover features a painting by S...

Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...

1959
New York Taxi Driver Tony Schwartz 1959
"Crazy
Crazy (Willie Nelson song)
"Crazy" is a ballad composed by Willie Nelson. It has been recorded by several artists, most notably by Patsy Cline, whose version was a #2 country hit in 1962....

"
Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline , born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Gore, Virginia, was an American country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success during the era of the Nashville sound in the early 1960s...

1961
Kennedy Inauguration Ceremony John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...

, and others
January 20, 1961 original
Judy at Carnegie Hall
Judy at Carnegie Hall
Judy at Carnegie Hall is a two-record live recording of a concert by Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall in New York.This concert appearance, on the night of April 23, 1961, has been called "the greatest night in show business history". Garland's live performances were big successes at the time and her...

Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...

1961
"I've Been Loving You Too Long
I've Been Loving You Too Long
"I've Been Loving You Too Long" is a song written by Otis Redding and Jerry Butler. It appeared as the A-side of a 1965 hit single by Otis Redding - and subsequently appeared on his third album, Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul...

 (To Stop Now)"
Otis Redding
Otis Redding
Otis Ray Redding, Jr. was an American soul singer-songwriter, record producer, arranger and talent scout. He is considered one of the major figures in soul and R&B...

1965
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...

The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

1967
At Folsom Prison
At Folsom Prison
At Folsom Prison is a live album by Johnny Cash, released on Columbia Records in May 1968. Since his 1955 song "Folsom Prison Blues", Cash had been interested in performing at a prison. His idea was put on hold until 1967, when personnel changes at Columbia Records put Bob Johnston in charge of...

Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...

1968
Ali Akbar College of Music
Ali Akbar College of Music
The Ali Akbar College of Music is the name of three schools founded by Indian musician Ali Akbar Khan to teach Indian classical music. The first was founded in 1956 in Calcutta, India. The second was founded in 1967 in Berkeley, California, but moved to its current location in San Rafael,...

,
Archive Selections
1960s–1970s
What's Going On
What's Going On
What's Going On is the eleventh studio album by soul musician Marvin Gaye, released May 21, 1971, on the Motown-subsidiary label Tamla Records...

Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye
Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. , better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and musician with a three-octave vocal range....

1971
Tapestry Carole King
Carole King
Carole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, King had an album, Tapestry, top the U.S...

1971
A Prairie Home Companion
A Prairie Home Companion
A Prairie Home Companion is a live radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor. The show runs on Saturdays from 5 to 7 p.m. Central Time, and usually originates from the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, although it is frequently taken on the road...


First broadcast
Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality. He is known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio...

July 6, 1974
Born to Run
Born to Run
The album's release was accompanied by a $250,000 promotional campaign by Columbia directed at both consumers and the music industry, making good use of Landau's "I saw rock 'n' roll's future—and its name is Bruce Springsteen" quote. With much publicity, Born to Run vaulted into the top 10 in its...

Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...

1975
Live at Yankee Stadium Fania All-Stars
Fania All-Stars
The Fania All-Stars was a musical ensemble established in 1968 by the composer, Johnny Pacheco, as a showcase for the musicians on the record label Fania Records, the leading salsa record company of the time.-Beginnings:...

1975

2004

In April 2005, the following 50 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board.
Recording or collection Performer or agent Year National
Archives
"Gypsy Love Song" Eugene Cowles 1898
"Some of These Days" Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker was a Russian/Ukrainian-born American singer and actress. Known for her stentorian delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first half of the 20th century...

1911
"The Castles in Europe One-Step
(Castle House Rag)"
Europe’s Society Orchestra
James Reese Europe
James Reese Europe was an American ragtime and early jazz bandleader, arranger, and composer. He was the leading figure on the African American music scene of New York City in the 1910s.-Biography:...

1914
"Swanee
Swanee (song)
"Swanee" is an American popular song written in 1919 by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Irving Caesar. It is most often associated with singer Al Jolson....

"
Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....

1920
Armistice Day
Armistice Day
Armistice Day is on 11 November and commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day...

 radio broadcast
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...

November 10, 1923 original
"See See Rider" Gertrude "Ma" Rainey
Ma Rainey
Ma Rainey was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues....

1923
"Charleston" Golden Gate Orchestra 1925
"Fascinating Rhythm
Fascinating Rhythm
"Fascinating Rhythm" is a popular song written by George Gershwin in 1924 with lyrics by Ira Gershwin.It was first introduced by Cliff Edwards, Fred Astaire and Adele Astaire in the Broadway musical Lady Be Good. The Astaires also recorded the song on April 19, 1926 in London with George Gershwin...

"
Fred
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...

 and
Adele Astaire
Adele Astaire
Lady Charles Cavendish , better known as Adele Astaire, was an American dancer and entertainer. She was Fred Astaire's elder sister. Her birthdate was often given as 1897 or 1898, but the 1900 U.S...

;
George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...

, piano
1926
NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 radio coverage of
Charles A. Lindbergh’s
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.Lindbergh, a 25-year-old U.S...


arrival and reception
in Washington, D.C.
June 11, 1927 copy
"Stardust
Stardust (song)
"Stardust" is an American popular song composed in 1927 by Hoagy Carmichael with lyrics added in 1929 by Mitchell Parish. Originally titled "Star Dust", Carmichael first recorded the song at the Gennett Records studio in Richmond, Indiana...

"
Hoagy Carmichael
Hoagy Carmichael
Howard Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing "Stardust", "Georgia On My Mind", "The Nearness of You", and "Heart and Soul", four of the most-recorded American songs of all time.Alec Wilder, in his study of the...

1927
"Blue Yodel (T for Texas)" Jimmie Rodgers
Jimmie Rodgers (country singer)
James Charles Rodgers , known as Jimmie Rodgers, was an American country singer in the early 20th century known most widely for his rhythmic yodeling...

1927
"Ain't Misbehavin'
Ain't Misbehavin' (song)
"Ain't Misbehavin" is a 1929 song written by Thomas "Fats" Waller, Harry Brooks and Andy Razaf . Waller recorded the original version that year for Victor Records and also later performed the song in the 1943 film Stormy Weather. It was used in the off-broadway musical Connie's Hot Chocolates...

"
Thomas "Fats" Waller
Fats Waller
Fats Waller , born Thomas Wright Waller, was a jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer...

1929
"Gregorio Cortez
Gregorio Cortez
Gregorio Cortez Lira was a Mexican American outlaw in the American Old West who became a folk hero to Mexicans living in South Texas. He was known for his ability to evade authorities as well as his impassioned words in court.- Background :Cortez's parents were itinerant laborers who brought...

"
Trovadores Regionales 1929
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901. The second and third movements were first performed with the composer as soloist on 2 December 1900...

Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

, piano;
Leopold Stokowski, conductor;
Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...

1929
"The Suncook Town Tragedy" Mabel Wilson Tatro
July 1930
Oral narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...

 from
the Lorenzo D. Turner Collection
Rosina Cohen 1932
"Stormy Weather" Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Birmingham Bertha",...

1933
"Body and Soul
Body and Soul (song)
"Body and Soul" was recorded as a duet by Tony Bennett and Amy Winehouse in 2011. It was the final recording made by Winehouse before her death on July 23, 2011. The single was released worldwide on September 14, 2011 on iTunes, MTV and VH1....

"
Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...

1939
Peter and the Wolf
Peter and the Wolf
Peter and the Wolf , Op. 67, is a composition written by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936 in the USSR. It is a children's story , spoken by a narrator accompanied by the orchestra....


(Sergey Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

)
Serge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky , was a Russian-born Jewish conductor, composer and double-bassist, known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.-Early career:...

, conductor;
Richard Hale, narrator;
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...

1939
"In the Mood
In the Mood
"In the Mood" is a big band era #1 hit recorded by American bandleader Glenn Miller. Joe Garland and Andy Razaf arranged "In the Mood" in 1937-1939 using a previously existing main theme composed by Glenn Miller before the start of the 1930s...

"
Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller
Alton Glenn Miller was an American jazz musician , arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known "Big Bands"...

 and His Orchestra
1939
Broadcasts from London Edward R. Murrow
Edward R. Murrow
Edward Roscoe Murrow, KBE was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada.Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, and Alexander Kendrick...

1940 copy
We Hold These Truths
We Hold These Truths
We Hold These Truths, a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the United States Bill of Rights, was an hour-long radio program that explored American values and aired live on December 15, 1941, the first to be broadcast on all four major networks...


(Norman Corwin
Norman Corwin
Norman Lewis Corwin was an American writer, screenwriter, producer, essayist and teacher of journalism and writing...

)
December 15, 1941 original
Piano Concerto No. 1, op. 23, Bb minor
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky)
The Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky between November 1874 and February 1875. It was revised in the summer of 1879 and again in December 1888. The first version received heavy criticism from Nikolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky's desired pianist....


(Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...

)
Vladimir Horowitz
Vladimir Horowitz
Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz    was a Russian-American classical virtuoso pianist and minor composer. His technique and use of tone color and the excitement of his playing were legendary. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.-Life and early...

, piano;
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...

; conductor;
NBC Symphony Orchestra
NBC Symphony Orchestra
The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra established by David Sarnoff of the National Broadcasting Company especially for conductor Arturo Toscanini...

1943
"Down by the Riverside
Down by the Riverside
"Down by the Riverside" is a traditional gospel song. It was first published in Carl Sandburg's The American Songbag and there are at least 14 black gospel recordings before World War II."Down by the Riverside" has a long history and was known in Civil War times. It was sung by blacks...

"
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an Amercian pioneering gospel singer, songwriter and recording artist who attained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and early rock and roll accompaniment...

1944
U.S. Highball
(A Musical Account of
a Transcontinental Hobo Trip)
Harry Partch
Harry Partch
Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.-Early...

, Gate 5 Ensemble
1946
Four Saints in Three Acts
Four Saints in Three Acts
Four Saints in Three Acts is an opera by American composer Virgil Thomson with a libretto by Gertrude Stein. Written in 1927-8, it contains about 20 saints, and is in at least four acts...

(Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...

)
Original cast 1947
"Manteca" Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

 Big Band
Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...


with Chano Pozo
Chano Pozo
Chano Pozo was a percussionist, singer, dancer and composer who played a major role in the founding of Latin jazz...

1947
The Jack Benny Program
The Jack Benny Program
The Jack Benny Program, starring Jack Benny, is a radio-TV comedy series that ran for more than three decades and is generally regarded as a high-water mark in 20th-century American comedy.-Cast:*Jack Benny - Himself...

Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...

March 28, 1948
"Foggy Mountain Breakdown
Foggy Mountain Breakdown
"Foggy Mountain Breakdown" is a bluegrass music instrumental by the bluegrass artists Flatt and Scruggs. It is a standard in the bluegrass repertoire. Banjo players consider the ability to deliver a convincing rendition of this piece the mark of an intermediate-level banjo player...

"
Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs 1949
"Lovesick Blues
Lovesick Blues
"Lovesick Blues" is a show tune written by composer Cliff Friend and co-lyricist & producer Irving Mills. It has become a pop standard and an even more popular country song since it helped make Hank Williams famous in the 1940s. Published through Tin Pan Alley in 1922, the song was first recorded...

"
Hank Williams 1949
Guys & Dolls Original cast 1950
"Old Soldiers Never Die"
(Farewell Address
Farewell speech
A Farewell speech or farewell address is a speech given by an individual leaving a position or place. They are often used by public figures such as politicians as a to the preceding career, or as statements delivered by persons relating to reasons for their leaving...

 to the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

)
General Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the...

April 19, 1951 copy
Songs by Tom Lehrer
Tom Lehrer
Thomas Andrew "Tom" Lehrer is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, mathematician and polymath. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater...

Tom Lehrer
Tom Lehrer
Thomas Andrew "Tom" Lehrer is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, mathematician and polymath. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater...

1953
"Hoochie Coochie Man
Hoochie Coochie Man
"Hoochie Coochie Man" is a blues standard written by Willie Dixon and first performed by Muddy Waters in 1954 . The song was a major hit upon its release, reaching #8 on Billboard magazine's Black Singles chart...

"
Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...

1954
"Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)
Earth Angel
"Earth Angel " is an American doo-wop song, originally released by The Penguins in 1954 on the Dootone label , as the B-side to "Hey Señorita." The song became a major hit for The Crew-Cuts in 1955, reaching the Billboard charts on January 29, 1955. It peaked at #3 on the Disk Jockey chart, #8 on...

"
The Penguins
The Penguins
The Penguins were an American doo-wop group of the 1950s and early 1960s, best remembered for their only Top 40 hit, "Earth Angel ", which was one of the first rhythm and blues hits to cross over to the pop charts...

1954
Tuskegee Institute Choir Sings Spirituals Tuskegee Institute Choir,
directed by William L. Dawson
William Levi Dawson (composer)
William Levi Dawson was an African-American composer, choir director and professor.-Life:...

1955
Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...

Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...

, conductor;
Richard P. Condie
Richard P. Condie
Richard P. Condie was the conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake City, Utah from 1957 to 1974....

, choir director;
Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Mormon Tabernacle Choir
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, sometimes colloquially referred to as MoTab, is a Grammy and Emmy Award winning, 360-member, all-volunteer choir. The choir is part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . However, the choir is completely self-funded, traveling and producing albums to...

;
Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...

1958
Giant Steps
Giant Steps
-Personnel:* John Coltrane — tenor saxophone* Tommy Flanagan — piano* Wynton Kelly — piano on "Naima"* Paul Chambers — bass* Art Taylor — drums* Jimmy Cobb — drums on "Naima"* Cedar Walton — piano on "Giant Steps' and Naima" alternate versions...

John Coltrane
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

1959
Drums of Passion Michael Babatunde Olatunji 1960
Peace Be Still James Cleveland
James Cleveland
The Reverend Dr. James Cleveland was a gospel singer, arranger, composer and, most significantly, the driving force behind the creation of the modern gospel sound, bringing the stylistic daring of hard gospel and jazz and pop music influences to arrangements for mass choirs...

1962
"The Girl from Ipanema
The Girl from Ipanema
"Garota de Ipanema" is a well-known bossa nova song, a worldwide hit in the mid-1960s that won a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965. It was written in 1962, with music by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. English lyrics were written later by Norman Gimbel.The...

"
(Garota de Ipanema)
Stan Getz
Stan Getz
Stanley Getz was an American jazz saxophone player. Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young. Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman's big band, Getz is described by critic Scott...

,
João Gilberto
João Gilberto
João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira, known as João Gilberto , is a Brazilian singer and guitarist. His seminal recordings, including many songs by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, established the new musical genre of Bossa nova in the late 1950s.-Biography:From an early age, music...

,
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Antônio Carlos Jobim
Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim , also known as Tom Jobim , was a Brazilian songwriter, composer, arranger, singer, and pianist/guitarist. He was a primary force behind the creation of the bossa nova style, and his songs have been performed by many singers and instrumentalists within...

,
Astrud Gilberto
Astrud Gilberto
Astrud Gilberto is a Brazilian samba and bossa nova singer. She is well known for the Grammy Award-winning song "The Girl from Ipanema".-Biography:...

1963
Live at the Apollo James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...

1963
Pet Sounds
Pet Sounds
Pet Sounds is the eleventh studio album by the American rock band The Beach Boys, released May 16, 1966, on Capitol Records. It has since been recognized as one of the most influential records in the history of popular music and one of the best albums of the 1960s, including songs such as "Wouldn't...

The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American rock band, formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California. The group was initially composed of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, The Beach Boys signed to Capitol Records in 1962...

1966
King James version of the Bible
King James Version of the Bible
The Authorized Version, commonly known as the King James Version, King James Bible or KJV, is an English translation of the Christian Bible by the Church of England begun in 1604 and completed in 1611...

Alexander Scourby
Alexander Scourby
Alexander Scourby was an American film, television, and voice actor known for his deep and resonant voice...

1966
Remarks broadcast from the moon Apollo 11
Apollo 11
In early 1969, Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was...

 astronaut
Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

 Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong
Neil Alden Armstrong is an American former astronaut, test pilot, aerospace engineer, university professor, United States Naval Aviator, and the first person to set foot upon the Moon....

July 21, 1969 original
At Fillmore East
At Fillmore East
At Fillmore East is a double live album by The Allman Brothers Band. The band's breakthrough success, At Fillmore East was released in July 1971. It ranks Number 49 among Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and remains among the top-selling albums in the band’s catalogue...

The Allman Brothers Band
The Allman Brothers Band
The Allman Brothers Band is an American rock/blues band once based in Macon, Georgia. The band was formed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969 by brothers Duane Allman and Gregg Allman , who were supported by Dickey Betts , Berry Oakley , Butch Trucks , and Jai Johanny "Jaimoe"...

1971
Star Wars (Soundtrack)
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (soundtrack)
John Williams' score for Star Wars was recorded over eight sessions at Anvil Studios in Denham, England on March 5, 8–12, 15 and 16, 1977. The score was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra with Williams himself conducting...

John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...

1977
Recordings of Asian elephants Katharine B. Payne 1984
Fear of a Black Planet
Fear of a Black Planet
Fear of a Black Planet is the third studio album by American hip hop group Public Enemy, released April 10, 1990, on Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records. Production for the album was handled by the group's production team The Bomb Squad, who expanded on the dense, sample-layered sound of the...

Public Enemy 1990
Nevermind
Nevermind
Nevermind is the second studio album by the American rock band Nirvana, released on September 24, 1991. Produced by Butch Vig, Nevermind was the group's first release on DGC Records...

Nirvana
Nirvana (band)
Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...

1991

2005

In April 2006, the following 50 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board.
Recording or collection Performer or agent Year National
Archives
"Canzone del Porter"
from Martha
Martha (opera)
Martha, oder Der Markt zu Richmond is a 'romantic comic' opera in four acts by Friedrich von Flotow, set to a German libretto by Friedrich Wilhelm Riese and based on a story by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges....

(von Flotow
Friedrich von Flotow
Friedrich Adolf Ferdinand, Freiherr von Flotow was a German composer. He is chiefly remembered for his opera Martha, which was popular in the 19th century....

)
Edouard de Reszke 1903
"Listen to the Lambs" Hampton Quartette;
recorded by Natalie Curtis
Natalie Curtis
Natalie Curtis was an American ethnomusicologist. Curtis, along with Alice Cunningham Fletcher and Frances Densmore, was one of a small group of women doing important ethnological studies in North America at the beginning of the 20th century...

 Burlin
1917
"Over There
Over There
"Over There" is a 1917 song popular with United States soldiers in both world wars.It was written by George M. Cohan during World War I. Notable early recordings include versions by Nora Bayes, Enrico Caruso, Billy Murray, and Charles King....

"
Nora Bayes
Nora Bayes
Nora Bayes was a popular American singer, comedienne and actress of the early 20th century.-Early life and career:...

1917
"Crazy Blues" Mamie Smith
Mamie Smith
-External links:* African American Registry* with photos* with .ram files of her early recordings* NPR special on the selection on "Crazy Blues" to the 2005...

1920
"My Man" and "Second Hand Rose" Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice was a popular and influential American illustrated song "model," comedienne, singer, theatre and film actress, who made many stage, radio and film appearances and is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series, The Baby Snooks Show...

1921
"Ory's Creole Trombone
Ory's Creole Trombone
"Ory's Creole Trombone" is a jazz composition by Kid Ory. Ory first recorded it in Los Angeles in 1921 . The band included Ory on trombone, Mutt Carey on cornet, Dink Johnson on clarinet, Fred Washington on piano, Ed Garland on bass and Ben Borders on drums...

"
Kid Ory
Kid Ory
Edward "Kid" Ory was a jazz trombonist and bandleader. He was born in Woodland Plantation near LaPlace, Louisiana.-Biography:...

June 1922
Second inauguration of Calvin Coolidge
Second inauguration of Calvin Coolidge
The second inauguration of Calvin Coolidge took place on March 4, 1925 marking the beginning of his second term as the thirtieth president of the United States. Chief Justice and former president William H. Taft administered the Oath of office...

Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge
John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was the 30th President of the United States . A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state...

March 4, 1925
"Tanec Pid Werbamy/
Dance Under the Willows"
Pawlo Humeniuk
Pawlo Humeniuk
Pawlo Humeniuk was a Ukrainian-American fiddler from the early 20th century, one of the biggest stars of the era's ethnic music.-Biography:...

1926
"Singin' the Blues" Frankie Trumbauer
Frankie Trumbauer
Orie Frank Trumbauer was one of the leading jazz saxophonists of the 1920s and 1930s. He played the C-melody saxophone which, in size, is between an alto and tenor saxophone...

 and
His Orchestra
with Bix Beiderbecke
Bix Beiderbecke
Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer.With Louis Armstrong, Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s...

1927
First official transatlantic
telephone conversation
W.S. Gifford and Sir Evelyn P. Murray January 7, 1927 original
"El Manisero" ("The Peanut Vendor
The Peanut Vendor
The Peanut Vendor is a Cuban song based on a street-seller's cry, and known as a pregón. It is possibly the most famous piece of music created by a Cuban musician...

")
(Two versions)
Rita Montaner,
vocal with orchestra;
Don Azpiazu and
His Havana Casino orchestra
1927;
1930
Light's Golden Jubilee Celebration October 21, 1929 copy
Beethoven’s Egmont Overture
Egmont (Beethoven)
Egmont, Op. 84, by Ludwig van Beethoven, is a set of incidental music pieces for the 1787 play of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It consists of an overture followed by a sequence of nine additional pieces for soprano, male narrator and full symphony orchestra...

, Op. 84
Modesto High School Band 1930
Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...

Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan was an American singer and actress who worked in films and on the stage. A quintessential torch singer, she made a big splash in the Chicago club scene in the 1920s...

, Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...

,
James Melton and others;
Victor Young
Victor Young
Victor Young was an American composer, arranger, violinist and conductor. He was born in Chicago.-Biography:...

, conductor;
Louis Alter
Louis Alter
Louis Alter was an American pianist, songwriter and composer. Alter was 13 when he began playing piano in theaters showing silent films...

, piano
1932
"Wabash Cannonball
Wabash Cannonball
"The Wabash Cannonball" is an American folk song about a fictional train, thought to have originated in the late nineteenth century. Its first documented appearance was on sheet music published in 1882, titled "" and credited to J. A. Roff...

"
Roy Acuff
Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the King of Country Music, Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown" format to the star singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.Acuff...

1936
"One O'Clock Jump
One O'Clock Jump
"One O'Clock Jump" is a jazz standard, a 12-bar blues instrumental, written in 1937 by Count Basie, with arrangement from Eddie Durham and Buster Smith. The original recording of the tune by Basie and his band is noted for the saxophone work of Herschel Evans and Lester Young; trumpeting by Buck...

"
Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...

 and His Orchestra
1937
The Fall of the City
The Fall of the City
The Fall of the City by Archibald MacLeish is the first American verse play written for radio. It was first broadcast over the Columbia Broadcasting System as part of the Columbia Workshop radio series on April 11, 1937, with a cast that featured Orson Welles and Burgess Meredith. Music was...

(Columbia Workshop
Columbia Workshop
Columbia Workshop was a radio series that aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System from 1936 to 1943, returning in 1946-47.-Irving Reis:...

)
Orson Welles, narrator;
Burgess Meredith
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...

, Paul Stewart
Paul Stewart (actor)
Paul Stewart was an American character actor known for his tough, guttural voice. He frequently portrayed villains and mobsters throughout his lengthy career....

April 11, 1937 copy
The Adventures of Robin Hood
The Adventures of Robin Hood (film)
The Adventures of Robin Hood is a 1938 American swashbuckler film directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. Filmed in Technicolor, the picture stars Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains.-Plot:...


(Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austro-Hungarian film and romantic music composer. While his compositional style was considered well out of vogue at the time he died, his music has more recently undergone a reevaluation and a gradual reawakening of interest...

)
May 11, 1938
Joe Louis
Joe Louis
Joseph Louis Barrow , better known as Joe Louis, was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time...

-Max Schmeling
Max Schmeling
Maximillian Adolph Otto Siegfried Schmeling was a German boxer who was heavyweight champion of the world between 1930 and 1932. His two fights with Joe Louis in the late 1930s transcended boxing, and became worldwide social events because of their national associations...

 fight
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...

Clem McCarthy
Clem McCarthy
Clem McCarthy was an American sportscaster and public address announcer. He also lent his voice to Pathe News's RKO newsreels. He was known for his gravelly voice and dramatic style, a "whiskey tenor" as sports announcer and executive David J...

, announcer
June 22, 1938
John the Revelator
John the Revelator (song)
"John the Revelator" is a traditional Gospel/blues call and response song. In the chorus, John of Patmos, the traditional author of the Book of Revelation, is writing "the book of the seven seals." At the time of the song's composition , John of Patmos was generally considered the same person as...

Golden Gate Quartet 1938
"Adagio for Strings
Adagio for Strings
Adagio for Strings is a work by Samuel Barber, arranged for string orchestra from the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11. Barber finished the arrangement in 1936, the same year as he wrote the quartet...

"
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...

, conductor;
NBC Symphony
November 5, 1938
Command Performance,
show No. 21
Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...

, master of ceremonies
Master of Ceremonies
A Master of Ceremonies , or compere, is the host of a staged event or similar performance.An MC usually presents performers, speaks to the audience, and generally keeps the event moving....

July 7, 1942 copy
"Straighten Up and Fly Right" Nat “King” Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...

1943
The Fred Allen
Fred Allen
Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it...

 Show
Fred Allen October 7, 1945
"Jole Blon (Jolie Blonde)" Harry Choates
Harry Choates
Harry Choates was an American Cajun music fiddler....

1946
Tubby the Tuba Victor Jory 1946
"Move On Up a Little Higher
Move On Up A Little Higher (song)
"Move On Up A Little Higher" is a gospel song written by W. Herbert Brewster, first recorded on September 12, 1947, by gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, that sold eight million copies. The song was honored with the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in . In 2005, the Library of Congress honored the song by...

"
Mahalia Jackson
Mahalia Jackson
Mahalia Jackson – January 27, 1972) was an African-American gospel singer. Possessing a powerful contralto voice, she was referred to as "The Queen of Gospel"...

1948
Anthology of American Folk Music
Anthology of American Folk Music
The Anthology of American Folk Music is a six-album compilation released in 1952 by Folkways Records , comprising eighty-four American folk, blues and country music recordings that were originally issued from 1927 to 1932.Experimental filmmaker and notable eccentric Harry Smith compiled the music...

Edited by Harry Smith
Harry Everett Smith
Harry Everett Smith was an American archivist, ethnomusicologist, student of anthropology, record collector, experimental filmmaker, artist, bohemian and mystic...

1952
"Schooner Bradley" Pat Bonner 1952–60
Damnation of Faust Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...


with the Harvard Glee Club
Harvard Glee Club
The Harvard Glee Club is a 60-voice, all-male choral ensemble at Harvard University. Founded in 1858 in the tradition of English and American glee clubs, it is the oldest collegiate chorus in the US. The Glee Club is part of the Holden Choruses of Harvard University, which also include the...


and Radcliffe Choral Society
Radcliffe Choral Society
The Radcliffe Choral Society is a 60-voice all-female choral ensemble at Harvard University. Founded in 1899, it is one of the country's oldest women's chorus and one of its most prominent collegiate choirs. With the all-male Harvard Glee Club and the mixed-voice Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium...

1954
"Blueberry Hill
Blueberry Hill (song)
"Blueberry Hill" is a popular song published in 1940 best remembered for its 1950s rock n' roll version by Fats Domino. The music was written by Vincent Rose, the lyrics by Al Lewis. It was recorded six times in 1940...

"
Fats Domino
Fats Domino
Antoine Dominique "Fats" Domino, Jr. is an American R&B and rock and roll pianist and singer-songwriter. He was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Creole was his first language....

1956
Variations for Orchestra
Representative of the Louisville Orchestra
First Edition Recordings series
Louisville Orchestra
Louisville Orchestra
The Louisville Orchestra is the primary orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky and has been called the cornerstone of the Louisville arts scene. It was founded in 1937 by Robert Whitney and Charles Farnsley, Mayor of Louisville...

1956
"Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On
Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On
"Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" is a song best known in the 1957 rock and roll/rockabilly hit version by Jerry Lee Lewis.-Origins of the song:...

"
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The...

1957
"That'll Be the Day
That'll Be the Day
"That'll Be the Day" is a song written by Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison and recorded by various artists including The Crickets and Linda Ronstadt. It was also the first song to be recorded by The Quarrymen, the skiffle group that subsequently became The Beatles...

"
The Crickets
The Crickets
The Crickets are a rock & roll band from Lubbock, Texas, formed by singer/songwriter Buddy Holly in the 1950s. Their first hit record was "That'll Be the Day", released in 1957....

1957
Poeme Electronique
Poème électronique
Poème électronique is a piece of electronic music by composer Edgard Varèse, written for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. The Philips corporation commissioned Le Corbusier to design the pavilion, which was intended as a showcase of their engineering progress...

Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....

1958
Time Out
Time Out (album)
Time Out is a jazz album by The Dave Brubeck Quartet, released in 1959 on Columbia Records, catalogue CL 1397. Recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City, it is based upon the use of time signatures that were unusual for jazz such as 9/8 and 5/4. The album is a subtle blend of cool...

The Dave Brubeck Quartet
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
The Dave Brubeck Quartet is an American jazz quartet, founded in 1951 by Dave Brubeck and originally featuring Paul Desmond on saxophone and Brubeck on piano...

1959
Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel
Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.-Early...

 interview
with James Baldwin
Representative of the Studs Terkel Collection at the Chicago History Museum (formerly the Chicago Historical Society)
Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel
Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.-Early...

, James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...

September 29, 1962
United States Military Academy
United States Military Academy
The United States Military Academy at West Point is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located at West Point, New York. The academy sits on scenic high ground overlooking the Hudson River, north of New York City...

 address
William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

April 19–20, 1962
"Dancing in the Street
Dancing in the Street
"Dancing in the Street" is a 1964 song first recorded by Martha and the Vandellas. It is one of Motown's signature songs and is the group's premier signature song.-Martha and the Vandellas original:...

"
Martha and the Vandellas
Martha and the Vandellas
Martha and the Vandellas were among the most successful groups of the Motown roster during the period 1963–1967...

1964
Live at the Regal
Live at the Regal
Live at the Regal is a 1965 live album by blues guitarist and singer B.B. King. It was recorded on November 21, 1964 at the Regal Theater in Chicago. The album is widely heralded as one of the greatest blues albums ever recorded and is #141 on Rolling Stone Magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All...

B.B. King 1965
Are You Experienced
Are You Experienced
Are You Experienced is the debut album by English/American rock band The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Released in 1967, it was the first LP for Track Records...

The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimi Hendrix Experience were an English-American psychedelic rock band that formed in London in October 1966. Comprising eponymous singer-songwriter and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist and backing vocalist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, the band was active until June 1969, in which...

1967
We're Only in It for the Money
We're Only in It for the Money
We're Only in It For the Money is the third studio album by The Mothers of Invention, released in March 1968. The album peaked at number thirty on the Billboard 200...

Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

 and the Mothers of Invention
The Mothers of Invention
The Mothers of Invention were an American band active from 1964 to 1969, and again from 1970 to 1975.They mainly performed works by, and were the original recording group of, US composer and guitarist Frank Zappa , although other members have had the occasional writing credit...

1968
Switched-On
Switched-On Bach
-Details:The album consists of pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed on a Moog synthesizer, a modular synthesizer system, one of which can be seen at the back of the room on the album cover. "Switched-On Bach," or "S-OB" as Carlos referred to it, was recorded on a custom-built 8 track recorder...

 Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

Wendy Carlos
Wendy Carlos
Wendy Carlos is an American composer and electronic musician. Carlos first came to notice in the late 1960s with recordings made on the Moog synthesizer, then a relatively new and unknown instrument; most notable were LPs of synthesized Bach and the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's film A...

1968
"Oh Happy Day
Oh Happy Day
"Oh Happy Day" is a 1967 gospel music arrangement of an 18th century hymn. Recorded by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, it became an international hit in 1969, reaching US #4 and UK #2 on the pop charts...

"
Edwin Hawkins
Edwin Hawkins
Edwin Hawkins is a Grammy Award-winning American gospel and R&B musician, pianist, choir master, composer and arranger. He is one of the originators of the urban contemporary gospel sound. He are best known for his arrangement of "Oh Happy Day" , which was included on the Songs of the Century list...

 Singers
1969
Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers
Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers
Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers is The Firesign Theatre's third comedy recording for Columbia Records, released in 1970. In 1983, The New Rolling Stone Record Guide called it "the greatest comedy album ever made"....

Firesign Theatre 1970
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron first recorded it for his 1970 album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, on which he recited the lyrics, accompanied by congas and bongo drums...

"
Gil Scott-Heron
Gil Scott-Heron
Gilbert "Gil" Scott-Heron was an American soul and jazz poet, musician, and author known primarily for his work as a spoken word performer in the 1970s and '80s...

1970
Will the Circle Be Unbroken
Will the Circle Be Unbroken
Will the Circle Be Unbroken is a 1972 album officially by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but with collaboration from many famous Bluegrass and country-western players, including Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, Bashful Brother Oswald, Norman Blake, Jimmy...

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is an American country-folk-rock band that has existed in various forms since its founding in Long Beach, California in 1966. The group's membership has had at least a dozen changes over the years, including a period from 1976 to 1981 when the band performed and recorded...

1972
The old foghorn, Kewaunee
Kewaunee, Wisconsin
Kewaunee is a city in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 2,806 at the 2000 census. Located on the northwestern shore of Lake Michigan, the city is the county seat of Kewaunee County....

, Wisconsin
Recorded by James A. Lipsky 1972
Songs in the Key of Life
Songs in the Key of Life
Songs in the Key of Life is the 13th album by American recording artist Stevie Wonder, released September 28, 1976, on Motown Records. It was the culmination of his "classic period" albums. An ambitious double LP with a 4-song bonus EP, Songs in the Key of Life became among the best-selling and...

Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...

1976
Daydream Nation
Daydream Nation
Daydream Nation is the fifth studio album by the American alternative rock band Sonic Youth. It was released in October 1988 by Enigma Records in the United States, and by Blast First in the United Kingdom....

Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...

1988

2006

On March 6, 2007, the following 25 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board.
Recording or collection Performer or agent Year National
Archives
"Uncle Josh and the Insurance Agent" Cal Stewart
Cal Stewart
Cal Stewart was a pioneer in vaudeville and early sound recordings. He is best remembered for his comic monologues in which he played "Uncle Josh" Weathersby, a resident of a mythical New England farming town called "Punkin Center."Born in Charlotte County, Virginia in 1856, Stewart spent his...

1904
"Il Mio Tesoro" John McCormack; orchestra
conducted by Walter Rogers
1916
National Defense Test General John J. Pershing
John J. Pershing
John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing, GCB , was a general officer in the United States Army who led the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I...

September 12, 1924 copy
"Black Bottom Stomp
Black Bottom (dance)
Black Bottom refers to a dance. which became popular in the 1920s, during the period known as the Flapper era.The dance originated in New Orleans in the 1900s. The theatrical show Dinah brought the Black Bottom dance to New York in 1924, and the George White's Scandals featured it at the Apollo...

"
Jelly Roll Morton
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe , known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer....

's Red Hot Peppers
1926
"Wildwood Flower
Wildwood Flower
"Wildwood Flower" is an American song, best known through performances and recordings by the Carter Family. However, the song predates them. The original title was "I'll Twine 'Mid the Ringlets"...

"
Carter Family
Carter Family
The Carter Family was a traditional American folk music group that recorded between 1927 and 1956. Their music had a profound impact on bluegrass, country, Southern Gospel, pop and rock musicians as well as on the U.S. folk revival of the 1960s. They were the first vocal group to become country...

1928
"Pony Blues
Pony Blues
"Pony Blues" is a Delta blues song composed by Charley Patton. With the help of record store owner, H. C. Speir, Patton's first recording session occurred on June 14, 1929, cut six sides, included "Pony Blues" , for Paramount Records. The song later became a Delta staple and was part of every young...

"
Charley Patton 1929
"You're the Top
You're the Top
"You're The Top" is a Cole Porter song from the 1934 musical Anything Goes. It is about a man and a woman who take turns complimenting each other...

"
Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...

1934
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger is a fictional masked Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture....


Episode: "The Osage Bank Robbery"
Earle Graser
Earle Graser
Earle Graser was an American radio actor at radio station WXYZ, Detroit, Michigan.-Early life:Graser was born in Kitchener, Ontario. He was a child when his family moved to Detroit, Michigan. Graser graduated from a Detroit high school and attended Wayne University in Michigan, where he earned an...

, John Todd
December 17, 1937
"Day of Infamy" speech to Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

December 8, 1941 copy
Native Brazilian music recorded
under the supervision of Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...

Pixinguinha
Pixinguinha
Alfredo da Rocha Viana, Jr., better known as Pixinguinha was a composer, arranger, flautist and saxophonist born in Rio de Janeiro. Pixinguinha is considered one of the greatest Brazilian composers of popular music, particularly within the genre of music known as choro...

, Donga, Cartola
Cartola
Angenor de Oliveira, known as Cartola , was a Brazilian singer, composer and poet considered to be a major figure in the development of samba.Cartola composed, alone or with partners, more than 500 songs.-Biography:...

,
Jararaca, Ratinho and José Espinguela
1942
"Peace in the Valley
Peace in the Valley
"Peace in the Valley" is a 1937 song written by Thomas A. Dorsey, originally for Mahalia Jackson. The song became a hit in 1951 for Red Foley and the Sunshine Boys, reaching No. 7 on the Country & Western Best Seller chart. It was among the first gospel recordings to sell one million copies...

"
Red Foley
Red Foley
Clyde Julian Foley , better known as Red Foley, was an American singer, musician, and radio and TV personality who made a major contribution to the growth of country music after World War II....

 and the Sunshine Boys
1951
"Polonaise in A Major" ("Polonaise militaire"),
Op. 40, No. 1, by Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

Artur Rubinstein 1952
"Blue Suede Shoes
Blue Suede Shoes
"Blue Suede Shoes" is a rock and roll standard written and first recorded by Carl Perkins in 1955 and is considered one of the first rockabilly records and incorporated elements of blues, country and pop music of the time...

"
Carl Perkins
Carl Perkins
Carl Lee Perkins was an American rockabilly musician who recorded most notably at Sun Records Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, beginning during 1954...

1955
Interviews with William "Billy" Bell
(Canadian-Irish northwoods work songs)
Recorded by Edward D. "Sandy" Ives 1956
Howl
Howl
"Howl" is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1955 and published as part of his 1956 collection of poetry titled Howl and Other Poems. The poem is considered to be one of the great works of the Beat Generation, along with Jack Kerouac's On the Road and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch...

Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

1959
The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart
The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart
The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart is a 1960 live album by comedian Bob Newhart. The debut album by Newhart, the album was number one on the Billboard Pop Album chart, topping an album by Elvis Presley and the cast album of The Sound of Music....

Bob Newhart
Bob Newhart
George Robert Newhart , known professionally as Bob Newhart, is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Noted for his deadpan and slightly stammering delivery, Newhart came to prominence in the 1960s when his album of comedic monologues The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was a worldwide...

1960
"Be My Baby
Be My Baby
"Be My Baby" is a 1963 single written by Phil Spector, Jeff Barry, and Ellie Greenwich, performed by The Ronettes and produced by Spector. When released as a single, the song reached #2 on the U.S. Billboard Pop Singles Chart and #4 on the UK's Record Retailer...

"
The Ronettes
The Ronettes
The Ronettes were a 1960s girl group from New York City, best known for their work with producer Phil Spector. The group consisted of lead singer Veronica Bennett ; her older sister, Estelle Bennett; and their cousin Nedra Talley...

1963
"We Shall Overcome
We Shall Overcome
"We Shall Overcome" is a protest song that became a key anthem of the African-American Civil Rights Movement . The title and structure of the song are derived from an early gospel song by African-American composer Charles Albert Tindley...

"
Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...

1963
"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
" Satisfaction" is a song by the English rock band The Rolling Stones, released in 1965. It was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and produced by Andrew Loog Oldham. Richards's throwaway three-note guitar riff — intended to be replaced by horns — opens and drives the song...

"
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...

1965
"A Change Is Gonna Come
A Change Is Gonna Come (song)
"A Change Is Gonna Come" is a 1964 single by R&B singer-songwriter Sam Cooke, written and first recorded in 1963 and released under the RCA Victor label shortly after his death in late 1964. Though only a modest hit for Cooke in comparison with his previous singles, the song came to exemplify the...

"
Sam Cooke
Sam Cooke
Samuel Cook, , better known under the stage name Sam Cooke, was an American gospel, R&B, soul, and pop singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur. He is considered to be one of the pioneers and founders of soul music. He is commonly known as the King of Soul for his distinctive vocal abilities and...

1965
The Velvet Underground & Nico The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City. First active from 1964 to 1973, their best-known members were Lou Reed and John Cale, who both went on to find success as solo artists. Although experiencing little commercial success while together, the band is often cited...

 and Nico
Nico
Nico was a German singer, lyricist, composer, musician, fashion model, and actress, who initially rose to fame as a Warhol Superstar in the 1960s...

1967
The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake
The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake
The 86 Years of Eubie Blake is a 1969 studio album by ragtime pianist Eubie Blake and marks a reunion for Blake with his longtime collaborator, Noble Sissle. The album was a 2006 entry into the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry....

Eubie Blake
Eubie Blake
James Hubert Blake was an American composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, Blake and long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote the Broadway musical Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans...

1969
Burnin' The Wailers 1973
Live in Japan Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."...

1973
Graceland
Graceland (album)
Graceland was Paul Simon's highest charting album in the U.S. in over a decade, reaching #3 in the national Billboard charts, receiving a certification of 5× Platinum by the RIAA and eventually selling over 14 million copies, making it Simon's most commercially successful album...

Paul Simon
Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...

1986

2007

On May 14, 2008, the following 25 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board.
Recording or collection Performer or agent Year National
Archives
The first transatlantic broadcast March 14, 1925
"Allons a Lafayette" Joe Falcon
Joe Falcon
Joe Falcon is a former US middle distance runner whose greatest success was his victory in the 1990 Oslo Dream Mile with a time of 3:49.31 minutes, which was the fastest mile in the world in 1990. In the course of the race, he ran a personal best over 1500 m of 3:33.6...

1928
"Casta Diva" from Bellini
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer. His greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi , La sonnambula , Norma , Beatrice di Tenda , and I puritani...

's Norma
Norma (opera)
Norma is a tragedia lirica or opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini with libretto by Felice Romani after Norma, ossia L'infanticidio by Alexandre Soumet. First produced at La Scala on December 26, 1831, it is generally regarded as an example of the supreme height of the bel canto tradition...

Rosa Ponselle
Rosa Ponselle
Rosa Ponselle , was an American operatic soprano with a large, opulent voice. She sang mainly at the New York Metropolitan Opera and is generally considered by music critics to have been one of the greatest sopranos of the past 100 years.-Early life:She was born Rosa Ponzillo on January 22, 1897,...

 and the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

 Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Giulio Setti
December 31, 1928 and January 30, 1929
"If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again
If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again
"If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again" is a popular gospel song written by John Whitfield "Whit" Vaughan , as a tribute to his own mother, Clara Beady Burgess-Vaughan. The words are based on a text by James Rowe, an English settler living in Georgia during the early twentieth century. A 1934...

"
Thomas A. Dorsey
Thomas A. Dorsey
Thomas Andrew Dorsey was known as "the father of black gospel music" and was at one time so closely associated with the field that songs written in the new style were sometimes known as "dorseys." Earlier in his life he was a leading blues pianist known as Georgia Tom.As formulated by Dorsey,...

1934
"Sweet Lorraine
Sweet Lorraine
"Sweet Lorraine" is a song by the band Uriah Heep, first released on the album The Magician's Birthday. It was written by Mick Box, Gary Thain and David Byron. Sweet Lorraine reached #91 in the US. It is one of the better known songs by the band, famous, in part, for its Moog synthesizer solo,...

"
Art Tatum
Art Tatum
Arthur "Art" Tatum, Jr. was an American jazz pianist and virtuoso who played with phenomenal facility despite being nearly blind.Tatum is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time...

1940
Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly was an American radio comedy series which maintained its popularity over decades. It premiered on NBC in 1935 and continued until its demise in 1959, long after radio had ceased to be the dominant form of entertainment in American popular culture.-Husband and wife in real...


Fibber's closet opens for the first time
Jim Jordan, Marian Jordan March 4, 1940
Wings Over Jordan May 10, 1942
Fiorello H. La Guardia reading the comics Fiorello H. La Guardia 1945
"Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)
Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)
"Call It Stormy Monday " is a blues song written by T-Bone Walker and first recorded in 1947. Confusingly, it is also sometimes referred to as "Stormy Monday Blues", although that is the title of a 1942 song by Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine...

"
T-Bone Walker
T-Bone Walker
Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker was a critically acclaimed American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who was one of the most influential pioneers and innovators of the jump blues and electric blues sound. He is the first musician recorded playing blues with the...

1947
Speech at the 1948 Democratic National Convention
1948 Democratic National Convention
The 1948 Democratic National Convention was held at Convention Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from July 12 to July 14, and resulted in the nominations of incumbent Harry S Truman for President and U.S. Senator Alben W...

Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

July 15, 1948
The Jazz Scene Various artists, produced by Norman Granz
Norman Granz
Norman Granz was an American jazz music impresario and producer.Granz was a fundamental figure in American jazz, especially from about 1947 to 1960...

1949
"It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels
It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels
"It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" is a 1952 country song written by J. D. "Jay" Miller, and originally recorded by Kitty Wells. It was an answer song to the Hank Thompson hit "The Wild Side of Life."...

"
Kitty Wells
Kitty Wells
Ellen Muriel Deason , known professionally as Kitty Wells, is an American country music singer. Her 1952 hit recording, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels", made her the first female country singer to top the U.S. country charts, and turned her into the first female country star...

1952
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...

Original cast 1956
Navajo Shootingway Ceremony Field Recordings Recorded by David McAllester 1957–1958
"Freight Train" and Other North Carolina Folk Songs and Tunes Elizabeth Cotten
Elizabeth Cotten
Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten was an American blues and folk musician, singer, and songwriter.A self-taught left-handed guitarist, Cotten developed her own original style. Her approach involved using a right-handed guitar , not re-strung for left-handed playing, essentially, holding a right-handed...

1959
United States Marine Band
United States Marine Band
The United States Marine Band is the premier band of the United States Marine Corps. Established by act of Congress on July 11, 1798, it is the oldest of the United States military bands and the oldest professional musical organization in the United States...

 Recordings for the National Cultural Center
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts center located on the Potomac River, adjacent to the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C...

1963
"Oh, Pretty Woman
Oh, Pretty Woman
"Oh, Pretty Woman" is a song, released in August 1964, which was a worldwide success for Roy Orbison. Recorded on the Monument Records label in Nashville, Tennessee, it was written by Roy Orbison and Bill Dees. The song spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100...

"
Roy Orbison
Roy Orbison
Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...

1964
"The Tracks of My Tears
The Tracks of My Tears
"The Tracks of My Tears" is a much recorded love ballad introduced in 1965 by The Miracles on Motown's' Tamla label. This song is considered to be among the finest recordings of The Miracles, and it sold over one million records within two years, making it The Miracles' fourth million-selling...

"
Smokey Robinson
Smokey Robinson
William "Smokey" Robinson, Jr. is an American R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson is one of the primary figures associated with Motown, second only to the company's founder, Berry Gordy...

 and the Miracles
The Miracles
The Miracles are an American rhythm and blues group from Detroit, Michigan, notable as the first successful group act for Berry Gordy's Motown Record Corporation . Their single "Shop Around" was Motown's first million-selling hit record, and the group went on to become one of Motown's signature...

1965
You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song
You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song
You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song is an album by folk singer Ella Jenkins. She is joined by members of the Urban Gateways Children's Chorus...

Ella Jenkins
Ella Jenkins
Ella Jenkins is an American folk singer. Dubbed “The First Lady of the Children’s Folk Song” by the Wisconsin State Journal, Jenkins has been a leading performer of children’s music for fifty years.-Family and personal life:...

1966
Music from the Morning of the World Various artists, recorded by David Lewiston
David Lewiston
David Sidney George Lewiston is a London-born collector of the world's traditional music. He is best known for his recordings initially released on LP on the Explorer Series of Nonesuch Records beginning in 1967.-Biography:...

1966
For the Roses
For the Roses
For the Roses is a 1972 album by Joni Mitchell, between her two biggest commercial and critical successes - Blue and Court and Spark. Despite this, in 2007 it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry...

Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

1972
Head Hunters
Head Hunters
Head Hunters is the twelfth studio album by American jazz musician Herbie Hancock, released October 13, 1973, on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place during September 1973 at Wally Heider Studios and Different Fur Trading Co. in San Francisco, California...

Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...

1973
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

 radio broadcasts
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

1976–79
Murmurs of Earth
Voyager Golden Record
The Voyager Golden Records are phonograph records which were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977. They contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for...


Disc prepared for the Voyager
Voyager program
The Voyager program is a U.S program that launched two unmanned space missions, scientific probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment of the late 1970s...

 spacecraft
1977
Thriller
Thriller (album)
Thriller is the sixth studio album by American recording artist Michael Jackson. It was released on November 30, 1982, by Epic Records as the follow-up to Jackson's critically and commercially successful 1979 album Off the Wall...

Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...

1982

2008

On June 10, 2009, the following 25 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board.
Recording or collection Performer or agent Year National
Archives
"No News, or What Killed the Dog" Nat M. Wills
Nat M. Wills
Nat M. Wills , was a popular stage star, vaudeville entertainer, and recording artist at the beginning of the 20th century...

1908
Acoustic recordings for Victor Talking Machine Company
Victor Talking Machine Company
The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....

Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz was a violinist, born in Vilnius, then Russian Empire, now Lithuania. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time.- Early life :...

1917–1924
"Night Life" Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Williams wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records...

1930
Sounds of the ivory-billed woodpecker
Ivory-billed Woodpecker
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is or was one of the largest woodpeckers in the world, at roughly 20 inches in length and 30 inches in wingspan. It was native to the virgin forests of the southeastern United States...

1935
Gang Busters
Gang Busters
Gang Busters was an American dramatic radio program heralded as "the only national program that brings you authentic police case histories." It premiered as G-Men, sponsored by Chevrolet, on July 20, 1935.-History:...

1935–1957
"Bei Mir Bistu Shein" The Andrews Sisters
The Andrews Sisters
The Andrews Sisters were a highly successful close harmony singing group of the swing and boogie-woogie eras. The group consisted of three sisters: contralto LaVerne Sophia Andrews , soprano Maxene Angelyn Andrews , and mezzo-soprano Patricia Marie "Patty" Andrews...

1938
"O Que é que a Bahiana tem" Carmen Miranda
Carmen Miranda
Carmen Miranda, GCIH was a Portuguese-born Brazilian samba singer, Broadway actress and Hollywood film star popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was, by some accounts, the highest-earning woman in the United States and noted for her signature fruit hat outfit she wore in the 1943 movie The Gang's...

1939
NBC Radio
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 coverage of Marian Anderson's recital at the Lincoln Memorial
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson was an African-American contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century...

April 9, 1939
"Tom Dooley
Tom Dooley (song)
"Tom Dooley" is an old North Carolina folk song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina. It is best known today because of a hit version recorded in 1958 by The Kingston Trio. This version was a multi-format hit, reaching #1 in Billboard, the...

"
Frank Proffitt
Frank Proffitt
Frank Proffitt was an Appalachian old time banjoist and performer at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. He was a key figure in inspiring musicians of the 1960s and 1970s to play the banjo. He recorded the ballad "Tom Dooley", learned from his aunt Nancy Prather...

1940
"Uncle Sam Blues"
(V-Disc
V-Disc
V-Disc was a morale-boosting initiative involving the production of several series of recordings during the World War II era by special arrangement between the United States government and various private U.S. record companies. The records were produced for the use of United States military...

)
Oran "Hot Lips" Page
Oran Page
Oran Thaddeus Page was an American jazz trumpeter, singer, and bandleader born in Dallas, Texas, United States. He was better known as Hot Lips Page by the public, and Lips Page by his fellow musicians...

, accompanied by Eddie Condon's Jazz Band
Eddie Condon
Albert Edwin Condon , better known as Eddie Condon, was a jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in the so-called "Chicago school" of early Dixieland, he also played piano and sang on occasion....

1944
Mary Margaret McBride Mary Margaret McBride
Mary Margaret McBride
Mary Margaret McBride was an American radio interview host and writer. Her popular radio shows spanned more than 40 years; she is also remembered for her few months of pioneering television, as an early sign of radio success not guaranteeing a transition to the new medium...

 and Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...

January 25, 1943
"Sinews of Peace" (Iron Curtain) Speech at Westminster College, Fulton
Fulton, Missouri
Fulton is a city in Callaway County, Missouri, the United States of America. It is part of the Jefferson City, Missouri Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 12,790 in the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Callaway County...

, Missouri
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

March 5, 1946
"The Churkendoose" Ray Bolger
Ray Bolger
Raymond Wallace "Ray" Bolger was an American entertainer of stage and screen, best known for his portrayal of the Scarecrow and Kansas farmworker Hank in The Wizard of Oz.-Early life:...

1947
"Boogie Chillen'" John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...

1948
A Child's Christmas in Wales
A Child's Christmas in Wales
A Child's Christmas in Wales is a prose work by the Welsh writer Dylan Thomas. Originally emerging from a piece written for radio, the poem was recorded by Thomas in 1952. The story is an anecdotal retelling of a Christmas from the view of a young child and is a romanticised version of Christmases...

Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...

1952
A Festival of Lessons and Carols as Sung on Christmas Eve in King's College Chapel, Cambridge King's College Choir
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
The Choir of King's College, Cambridge is one of today's most accomplished and renowned representatives of the great British choral tradition. It was created by King Henry VI, who founded King's College, Cambridge in 1441, to provide daily singing in his Chapel, which remains the main task of the...

; Boris Ord
Boris Ord
Boris Ord , born Bernhard Ord, was an English organist, composer and musical director best known as the choir master of King's College, Cambridge....

, director
1954
West Side Story
West Side Story (Original Broadway Cast)
West Side Story is the 1957 recording of a Broadway production of the musical West Side Story. Recorded 3 days after the show opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, the recording was released in October 1957 in both mono and stereo formats. In 1962, the album reached #5 on Billboard's "Pop Album"...

Original cast 1957
"Tom Dooley
Tom Dooley (song)
"Tom Dooley" is an old North Carolina folk song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina. It is best known today because of a hit version recorded in 1958 by The Kingston Trio. This version was a multi-format hit, reaching #1 in Billboard, the...

"
The Kingston Trio
The Kingston Trio
The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds...

1958
"Rumble" Link Wray
Link Wray
Fred Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr was an American rock and roll guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer....

1958
The Play of Daniel: A Twelfth-Century Drama
Play of Daniel
The Play of Daniel, or Ludus Danielis, is either of two medieval Latin liturgical dramas based on the biblical Book of Daniel, one of which is accompanied by monophonic music....

New York Pro Musica
New York Pro Musica
New York Pro Musica was a vocal and instrumental ensemble that specialized in Medieval and Renaissance early music. It was co-founded in 1952, under the name Pro Musica Antiqua, by Noah Greenberg, a choral director, and Bernard Krainis, a recorder player who studied with Erich Katz.The ensemble is...

 under the direction of Noah Greenberg
1958
"Rank Stranger" The Stanley Brothers
The Stanley Brothers
The Stanley Brothers were an American bluegrass duo made up of brothers Carter and Ralph Stanley.-Biography:Carter and Ralph Stanley hailed originally from Dickenson County, Virginia. The family soon moved to McClure, Virginia where their parents worked a small farm in the Clinch Mountains...

1960
"At Last
At Last
"At Last" is a 1941 song written by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren for the musical film Orchestra Wives, starring George Montgomery and Ann Rutherford. It was performed in the film and on record by Glenn Miller and his orchestra, with vocals by Ray Eberle and Pat Friday...

"
Etta James
Etta James
Etta James is an American blues, soul, rhythm and blues , rock and roll, gospel and jazz singer. In the 1950s and 1960s, she had her biggest success as a blues and R&B singer...

1961
2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks
2000 Year Old Man
The 2000 Year Old Man is a persona in a comedy skit, originally created by Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner in 1961.Mel Brooks played the oldest man in the world, interviewed by Carl Reiner in a series of comedy routines that appeared on television, as well as being made into a collection of records...

Carl Reiner
Carl Reiner
Carl Reiner is an American actor, film director, producer, writer and comedian. He has won nine Emmy Awards and one Grammy Award during this career...

 and Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...

1961
The Who Sings My Generation The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...

1966
"He Stopped Loving Her Today
He Stopped Loving Her Today
"He Stopped Loving Her Today" is the title of a song by American country music artist George Jones that has been named in several surveys as the greatest country song of all time. It was released in April 1980 as the lead single from the album I Am What I Am. The song was Jones's first No. 1 single...

"
George Jones
George Jones
George Glenn Jones is an American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage to Tammy Wynette....

1980

2009

On June 23, 2010, the following 25 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board.

Recording or collection Performer or agent Year National
Archives
"Fon der Choope (From the Wedding)" Abe Elenkrig’s Yidishe Orchestra April 4, 1913
"Canal Street Blues" King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band April 5, 1923
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...

, NBC broadcast
Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

, featuring Kirsten Flagstad
Kirsten Flagstad
Kirsten Målfrid Flagstad was a Norwegian opera singer and a highly regarded Wagnerian soprano...

 and Lauritz Melchior
Lauritz Melchior
Lauritz Melchior was a Danish and later American opera singer. He was the pre-eminent Wagnerian tenor of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and has since come to be considered the quintessence of his voice type.-Biography:...

,
March 9, 1935
"When You Wish Upon a Star
When You Wish upon a Star
"When You Wish upon a Star" is a song written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington for Walt Disney's 1940 adaptation of Pinocchio. The original version of the song was sung by Cliff Edwards in the character of Jiminy Cricket, and is heard over the opening credits and again in the final scene of the...

"
Cliff Edwards
Cliff Edwards
Cliff Edwards , also known as "Ukelele Ike", was an American singer and voice actor who enjoyed considerable popularity in the 1920s and early 1930s, specializing in jazzy renditions of pop standards and novelty tunes. He had a number-one hit with "Singin' in the Rain" in 1929...

1938 (recorded) / 1940 (released)
America's Town Meeting of the Air
America's Town Meeting of the Air
America’s Town Meeting of the Air was a public affairs discussion broadcast on radio from 1935 to 1956, mainly on the NBC Blue Network and its successor, ABC Radio...

: "Should Our Ships Convoy Materials to England?"
George V. Denny (host); Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world...

, John Flynn
John Flynn
John Flynn may refer to:*John Flynn , professional baseball player*John Flynn , American film director*John Flynn , Irish footballer...

 (guests)
May 8, 1941
The Library of Congress Marine Corps Combat Field Recording Collection, Second Battle of Guam. 1944
"Evangeline Special" and "Love Bridge Waltz" Iry LeJeune
Iry LeJeune
Iry LeJeune was one of the best selling and most popular Cajun musicians in the mid to late 1940s into the early 1950s....

1948
The Little Engine that Could
The Little Engine That Could
The Little Engine that Could is a children's story that appeared in the United States of America. The book is used to teach children the value of optimism and hard work...

Paul Wing, narrator 1949
Leon Metcalf Collection of recordings of the First People of western Washington State Leon Metcalf 1950–1954
"Tutti Frutti
Tutti Frutti (song)
"Tutti Frutti" is a 1955 song by Little Richard, which became his first hit record. With its opening cry of "A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bop-bop!" and its hard-driving sound and wild lyrics, it became not only a model for many future Little Richard songs, but also one of the...

"
Little Richard
Little Richard
Richard Wayne Penniman , known by the stage name Little Richard, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, recording artist, and actor, considered key in the transition from rhythm and blues to rock and roll in the 1950s. He was also the first artist to put the funk in the rock and roll beat and...

1955
"Smokestack Lightning
Smokestack Lightning
"Smokestack Lightning" is a classic of the blues. In 1956, Howlin' Wolf recorded the song and it became one of his most popular and influential songs...

"
Howlin' Wolf
Howlin' Wolf
Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....

1956
Gypsy Original cast recording 1959
The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings
The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961
The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961, a three-CD box set released in 2005, marks the first time the entire Bill Evans Trio's complete sets at the Village Vanguard on June 25, 1961 have been released in their entirety...

Bill Evans Trio June 25, 1961
"Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)
Daisy Bell
"Daisy Bell" is a popular song with the well-known chorus "Daisy, Daisy/Give me your answer do/I'm half crazy/all for the love of you" as well as the line "...a bicycle built for two".-History:"Daisy Bell" was composed by Harry Dacre in 1892...

"
Max Mathews
Max Mathews
Max Vernon Mathews was a pioneer in the world of computer music.-Biography:...

1961
I Started Out as a Child
I Started Out as a Child
I Started Out as a Child is Bill Cosby's second album, released in 1964. It is the first Cosby album that features his childhood memories in his comic routines, but many of the tracks are still observational humor....

Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby
William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own series, the...

1964
Azucar Pa' Ti Eddie Palmieri
Eddie Palmieri
Eddie Palmieri , is a Grammy Award winning Puerto Rican pianist, bandleader and musician, best known for combining jazz piano and instrumental solos with Latin rhythms.-Early years:...

1965
Today!
Today! (Mississippi John Hurt album)
Today! is the second studio album, but third body of work recorded by folk/country blues musician Mississippi John Hurt. It was released in 1966 by Vanguard Records. This album contains some of the first commercial material recorded after his "rediscovery" in 1963, and is the first he recorded for...

Mississippi John Hurt
Mississippi John Hurt
John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt was an American country blues singer and guitarist.Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself how to play the guitar around age nine...

1966
"Silver Apples of the Moon" Morton Subotnick
Morton Subotnick
Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch...

1967
Soul Folk in Action The Staple Singers
The Staple Singers
The Staple Singers were an American gospel, soul, and R&B singing group. Roebuck "Pops" Staples , the patriarch of the family, formed the group with his children Cleotha , Pervis , Yvonne , and Mavis...

1968
The Band
The Band (album)
- Bonus Track listing from 2000 re-release :All songs by Robbie Robertson unless otherwise noted. The 2000 re-release has also been packaged as a double CD with The Band's debut album Music from Big Pink.- Personnel :...

The Band
The Band
The Band was an acclaimed and influential roots rock group. The original group consisted of Rick Danko , Garth Hudson , Richard Manuel , and Robbie Robertson , and Levon Helm...

1969
"Coal Miner's Daughter
Coal Miner's Daughter (song)
"Coal Miner's Daughter" is an autobiographical 1969 country music song written, released and made famous by Loretta Lynn. Released in 1970, the song became Lynn's signature song, one of the genre's most widely-known songs, and provided the basis for both her autobiography and a movie on her...

"
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn is an American country music singer-songwriter, author and philanthropist. Born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky to a coal miner father, Lynn married at 13 years old, was a mother soon after, and moved to Washington with her husband, Oliver Lynn. Their marriage was sometimes tumultuous; he...

1970
Red Headed Stranger
Red Headed Stranger
Red Headed Stranger is a 1975 album by American outlaw country singer Willie Nelson. After the wide success of his recordings with Atlantic records, Nelson signed a contract with Columbia Records, a label that gave him total creative control over his works...

Willie Nelson
Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelson is an American country music singer-songwriter, as well as an author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie , combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger and Stardust , made Nelson one of the most recognized...

1975
Horses
Horses (album)
"Horses" is often cited as one of the greatest albums in music history. In 2003, the album was ranked number 44 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. NME named the album number 1 in its list "20 Near-as-Damn-It Perfect Initial Efforts"...

Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....

1975
"Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe (song)
"Radio Free Europe" is a song by American alternative rock band R.E.M. "Radio Free Europe" was released as R.E.M.'s debut single on the short-lived independent record label Hib-Tone in 1981...

"
original Hib-Tone
Hib-Tone
Hib-Tone is an American recording label, based in Atlanta, Georgia, founded by Jonny Hibbert, a law student at Woodrow Wilson College of Law, in 1981. The label has released eight records, including two full-length albums by the bands Design and RF and the Radar Angels...

 single

R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...

1981
"Dear Mama
Dear Mama
"Dear Mama" is a hip hop song by American hip hop artist 2Pac. The track was produced by Tony Pizarro for 2Pac's third solo album, Me Against the World, which was released in 1995. The song was written by 2Pac as an ode to his own mother, Afeni Shakur....

"
2Pac 1995

2010

On April 6, 2011, the following 25 selections were announced.
Recording or collection Performer or agent Year National
Archives
Phonautograms Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville was a French printer and bookseller who lived in Paris. He invented the earliest known sound recording device, the phonautograph, which was patented in France on 25 March 1857....

ca. 1853–1861
"Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is a 1908 Tin Pan Alley song by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer which has become the unofficial anthem of baseball, although neither of its authors had attended a game prior to writing the song. The song is traditionally sung during the seventh-inning stretch of...

"
Edward Meeker
Edward Meeker
Edward Meeker was an American US singer and performer, best known for his appearances on the recordings of Thomas Edison, as an announcer, and performing songs like Chicken Reel and Take Me Out To The Ball Game, as well as reading vaudville skits and providing sound effects.Meeker was born in East...

, accompanied by the Edison Orchestra
1908
Yahi language
Yahi language
Yahi is an extinct language formerly spoken in the upper Sacramento Valley area, roughly in the area between Mill Creek and Deer Creek. It is grouped with the Southern forms of the Yana languages which, together with Central and Northern Yana are an isolated group of languages...

 cylinder recordings
Ishi
Ishi
Ishi was the last member of the Yahi, the last surviving group of the Yana people of the U.S. state of California. Ishi is believed to have been the last Native American in Northern California to have lived most of his life completely outside the European American culture...

, last surviving member of the Yahi tribe
1911–1914
"Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground
Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground
"Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground"Because documentation is scarce in early recordings, the title of the song appears differently in many sources. It is often called "Dark Was the Night" or punctuated as "Dark Was the Night ". is a gospel-blues song written and performed by American musician...

"
Blind Willie Johnson
Blind Willie Johnson
"Blind" Willie Johnson was an American singer and guitarist, whose music straddled the border between blues and spirituals....

1927
"It's the Girl" The Boswell Sisters
Boswell Sisters
The Boswell Sisters were a close harmony singing group, consisting of sisters Martha Boswell , Connee Boswell , and Helvetia "Vet" Boswell , noted for intricate harmonies and rhythmic experimentation...

 with the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra
1931
"Mal Hombre" Lydia Mendoza
Lydia Mendoza
Lydia Mendoza was an American guitarist and singer of Tejano music. She is known as La Alondra de la Frontera ....

1934
"Tumbling Tumbleweeds
Tumbling Tumbleweeds
"Tumbling Tumbleweeds" is a song composed by Bob Nolan, one of the founding members of the Sons of the Pioneers. Although one of the most famous songs associated with cowboys, the song was composed by Nolan back in the 1930s while he was working as a caddy and living in Los Angeles...

"
The Sons of the Pioneers 1934
Talking Union The Almanac Singers 1941
Jazz at the Philharmonic
Jazz at the Philharmonic
Jazz at the Philharmonic, or JATP, was the title of a series of jazz concerts, tours and recordings produced by Norman Granz....

Nat "King" Cole, Les Paul
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...

, Buddy Rich
Buddy Rich
Bernard "Buddy" Rich was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Rich was billed as "the world's greatest drummer" and was known for his virtuosic technique, power, groove, and speed.-Early life:...

, others
July 2, 1944
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...

's "Pope Marcellus Mass"
Roger Wagner Chorale 1951
"The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest" Reverend C. L. Franklin
C. L. Franklin
Clarence LaVaughn Franklin , was an American Baptist minister, a civil rights activist, and father of the legendary soul and gospel singer Aretha Franklin.-Background:...

1953
"Tipitina" Professor Longhair
Professor Longhair
Professor Longhair was a New Orleans blues singer and pianist...

1953
"At Sunset" Mort Sahl
Mort Sahl
Morton Lyon "Mort" Sahl is a Canadian-born American comedian and actor. He occasionally wrote jokes for speeches delivered by President John F. Kennedy. He was the first comedian to record a live album and the first to perform on college campuses...

1955
Interviews with jazz musicians for the Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...

Willis Conover
Willis Conover
Willis Clark Conover, Jr. was a jazz producer and broadcaster on the Voice of America for over forty years. He produced jazz concerts at the White House, the Newport Jazz Festival, and for movies and television. By arranging concerts where people of all races were welcome, he is credited with...

1956
The Music from Peter Gunn
The Music from Peter Gunn
The Music from Peter Gunn is a 1959 album by Henry Mancini . It was the first album ever to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1959. It was followed by More Music from "Peter Gunn" . The main theme is notable for its combination of jazz orchestration with a straightforward, rock 'n roll...

Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini was an American composer, conductor and arranger, best remembered for his film and television scores. He won a record number of Grammy Awards , plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1995...

1958
United Sacred Harp
Sacred Harp
Sacred Harp singing is a tradition of sacred choral music that took root in the Southern region of the United States. It is part of the larger tradition of shape note music.- The music and its notation :...

 Musical Convention in Fyffe
Fyffe, Alabama
Fyffe is a town in DeKalb County, Alabama, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 1,018. Fyffe is located on top of Sand Mountain....

, Alabama
field recordings by Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...

 and Shirley Collins
Shirley Collins
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE is a British folksinger who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s...

1959
Blind Joe Death
Blind Joe Death
Blind Joe Death is the first album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey. There are three different versions of the album, and the original self-released edition of fewer than 100 copies is extremely rare...

John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...

1959, 1964, 1967
"Stand by Your Man
Stand By Your Man
"Stand by Your Man" is a song co-written by Tammy Wynette and Billy Sherrill and originally recorded by Tammy Wynette, released as a single in September 1968 in the USA...

"
Tammy Wynette
Tammy Wynette
Virginia Wynette Pugh, known professionally as Tammy Wynette , was an American country music singer-songwriter and one of the genre's best-known artists and biggest-selling female vocalists....

1968
Trout Mask Replica
Trout Mask Replica
Trout Mask Replica is the third album by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, released in June 1969. Produced by Beefheart's friend and former schoolmate Frank Zappa, it was originally released as a double album on Zappa's Straight Records label...

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band 1969
Songs of the Humpback Whale Frank Watlington, Roger Payne
Roger Payne
Roger Searle Payne is a biologist and environmentalist famous for the 1967 discovery of Whale song among Humpback whales. Payne later became an important figure in the worldwide campaign to end commercial whaling.Payne studied at Harvard University and Cornell...

, and others
1970
"Let's Stay Together
Let's Stay Together (song)
"Let's Stay Together" is a song by Al Green on his 1972 album of the same name. Released as a single in 1971, the song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and remained on the chart for 16 weeks and also topped Billboards R&B chart for nine weeks. It was ranked the 60th greatest song of all time...

"
Al Green
Al Green
Albert Greene , better known as Al Green, is an American gospel and soul music singer. He reached the peak of his popularity in the 1970s, with hit singles such as "You Oughta Be With Me", "I'm Still In Love With You", "Love and Happiness", and "Let's Stay Together"...

1971
"Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land)" New York Strings Quartet 1972
Aja
Aja (album)
-Charts:AlbumPop Singles-Awards:Grammy Awards-External links:**, courtesy of The Museum of Classic Chicago Television...

Steely Dan
Steely Dan
Steely Dan is an American rock band; its core members are Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. The band's popularity peaked in the late 1970s, with the release of seven albums blending elements of jazz, rock, funk, R&B, and pop...

1977
GOPAC
GOPAC
GOPAC is a Republican state and local political training organization. Although often thought of as a PAC, or Political Action Committee, it is actually a 527 organization. It describes itself as "the premier training organization for Republican candidates in elected office on the state and local...

 Strategy and Instructional Tapes
Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich is a U.S. Republican Party politician who served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995 and as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999....

, others
1986–1994
3 Feet High and Rising
3 Feet High and Rising
3 Feet High and Rising is the debut album from American hip hop trio De La Soul, released in 1989.The album marked the first of three full-length collaborations with producer Prince Paul, which would become the critical and commercial peak of both parties. It is consistently placed on 'greatest...

De La Soul
De La Soul
De La Soul is an American hip hop trio formed in 1987 on Long Island, New York. The band is best known for their eclectic sampling, quirky lyrics, and their contributions to the evolution of the jazz rap and alternative hip hop subgenres...

1989

Trivia

, the oldest recording on the list is Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville was a French printer and bookseller who lived in Paris. He invented the earliest known sound recording device, the phonautograph, which was patented in France on 25 March 1857....

's Phonautograms which date back to 1853. The most recent is the song "Dear Mama
Dear Mama
"Dear Mama" is a hip hop song by American hip hop artist 2Pac. The track was produced by Tony Pizarro for 2Pac's third solo album, Me Against the World, which was released in 1995. The song was written by 2Pac as an ode to his own mother, Afeni Shakur....

" by 2Pac
Tupac Shakur
Tupac Amaru Shakur , known by his stage names 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rapper and actor. Shakur has sold over 75 million albums worldwide as of 2007, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world...

 which came out in 1995 on his album Me Against the World
Me Against the World
Me Against the World is the third studio album by American hip hop artist Tupac Shakur. It was released March 14, 1995 on the Interscope Records label. The album was composed of un-used tracks from the Thug Life era, and from other studio sessions from 1993 to 1994...

.
  • Selections vary widely in duration. Both the early Edison recordings and the instrumental "Rumble" by Link Wray
    Link Wray
    Fred Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr was an American rock and roll guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer....

     clock in at under three minutes. Meanwhile Georg Solti’s
    Georg Solti
    Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...

     recording of Wagner’s
    Richard Wagner
    Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

     complete Ring Cycle is approximately 15 hours in duration and Alexander Scourby’s
    Alexander Scourby
    Alexander Scourby was an American film, television, and voice actor known for his deep and resonant voice...

     recitation of the King James Bible is over 80 hours in length.

, there are nine cast show recordings on the Registry, including Oklahoma!
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...

,
Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...

,
Gypsy and The Cradle Will Rock
The Cradle Will Rock
The Cradle Will Rock is a 1937 musical by Marc Blitzstein. Originally a part of the Federal Theatre Project, it was directed by Orson Welles, and produced by John Houseman. The show was recorded and released on seven 78-rpm discs in 1938, making it the first cast album recording.The musical is a...

.

, there is one TV theme on the list, Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini was an American composer, conductor and arranger, best remembered for his film and television scores. He won a record number of Grammy Awards , plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1995...

's music for Peter Gunn
Peter Gunn
Peter Gunn is an American private eye television series which aired on the NBC and later ABC television networks from 1958 to 1961. The show's creator was Blake Edwards...

.

, excluding radio series, there are 10 comedy recordings on the Registry, including The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart
The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart
The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart is a 1960 live album by comedian Bob Newhart. The debut album by Newhart, the album was number one on the Billboard Pop Album chart, topping an album by Elvis Presley and the cast album of The Sound of Music....

by Bob Newhart
Bob Newhart
George Robert Newhart , known professionally as Bob Newhart, is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Noted for his deadpan and slightly stammering delivery, Newhart came to prominence in the 1960s when his album of comedic monologues The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was a worldwide...

, 2000 Years with Carl Reiner
Carl Reiner
Carl Reiner is an American actor, film director, producer, writer and comedian. He has won nine Emmy Awards and one Grammy Award during this career...

 and Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...

,
I Started Out as a Child
I Started Out as a Child
I Started Out as a Child is Bill Cosby's second album, released in 1964. It is the first Cosby album that features his childhood memories in his comic routines, but many of the tracks are still observational humor....

by Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby
William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own series, the...

, At Sunset by Mort Sahl
Mort Sahl
Morton Lyon "Mort" Sahl is a Canadian-born American comedian and actor. He occasionally wrote jokes for speeches delivered by President John F. Kennedy. He was the first comedian to record a live album and the first to perform on college campuses...

 and “No News, or What Killed the Dog” by Nat M. Wills
Nat M. Wills
Nat M. Wills , was a popular stage star, vaudeville entertainer, and recording artist at the beginning of the 20th century...

.
, there are 32 solo female musical artists represented on the list, including Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker was a Russian/Ukrainian-born American singer and actress. Known for her stentorian delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first half of the 20th century...

, Carole King
Carole King
Carole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, King had an album, Tapestry, top the U.S...

, Tammy Wynette
Tammy Wynette
Virginia Wynette Pugh, known professionally as Tammy Wynette , was an American country music singer-songwriter and one of the genre's best-known artists and biggest-selling female vocalists....

, Lydia Mendoza
Lydia Mendoza
Lydia Mendoza was an American guitarist and singer of Tejano music. She is known as La Alondra de la Frontera ....

, Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...

, Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

, Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice was a popular and influential American illustrated song "model," comedienne, singer, theatre and film actress, who made many stage, radio and film appearances and is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series, The Baby Snooks Show...

, Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...

, Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....

, Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn is an American country music singer-songwriter, author and philanthropist. Born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky to a coal miner father, Lynn married at 13 years old, was a mother soon after, and moved to Washington with her husband, Oliver Lynn. Their marriage was sometimes tumultuous; he...

 and Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline , born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Gore, Virginia, was an American country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success during the era of the Nashville sound in the early 1960s...

. (Women are also represented as members of groups, for example: the Velvet Underground and Nico with Maureen Tucker
Maureen Tucker
Maureen Ann "Moe" Tucker is a musician best known for having been the drummer for the rock group The Velvet Underground.- The Velvet Underground :...

 and Nico
Nico
Nico was a German singer, lyricist, composer, musician, fashion model, and actress, who initially rose to fame as a Warhol Superstar in the 1960s...

; the Carter Family
Carter Family
The Carter Family was a traditional American folk music group that recorded between 1927 and 1956. Their music had a profound impact on bluegrass, country, Southern Gospel, pop and rock musicians as well as on the U.S. folk revival of the 1960s. They were the first vocal group to become country...

 with “Mother” Maybelle Carter
Maybelle Carter
"Mother" Maybelle Carter was an American country musician. She is best known as a member of the historic Carter Family act in the 1920s and 1930s and also as a member of Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters.-Biography:...

 and Sara Carter
Sara Carter
Sara Carter was an American Country music musician. Known for her deep and distinctive singing voice, she was the lead singer on most of the recordings of the historic Carter Family act in the 1920s and 1930s....

, and Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...

 featuring Kim Gordon
Kim Gordon
Kim Althea Gordon is an American musician, vocalist, artist, record producer, video director and actress. She has sung and played bass and guitar in the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, and in Free Kitten with Julia Cafritz...

).
  • Some of the country music titles on the list include: “Crazy
    Crazy (Willie Nelson song)
    "Crazy" is a ballad composed by Willie Nelson. It has been recorded by several artists, most notably by Patsy Cline, whose version was a #2 country hit in 1962....

    ” by Patsy Cline
    Patsy Cline
    Patsy Cline , born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Gore, Virginia, was an American country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success during the era of the Nashville sound in the early 1960s...

    , “He Stopped Loving Her Today
    He Stopped Loving Her Today
    "He Stopped Loving Her Today" is the title of a song by American country music artist George Jones that has been named in several surveys as the greatest country song of all time. It was released in April 1980 as the lead single from the album I Am What I Am. The song was Jones's first No. 1 single...

    ” by George Jones
    George Jones
    George Glenn Jones is an American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage to Tammy Wynette....

    , “Wildwood Flower
    Wildwood Flower
    "Wildwood Flower" is an American song, best known through performances and recordings by the Carter Family. However, the song predates them. The original title was "I'll Twine 'Mid the Ringlets"...

    ” by the Carter Family
    Carter Family
    The Carter Family was a traditional American folk music group that recorded between 1927 and 1956. Their music had a profound impact on bluegrass, country, Southern Gospel, pop and rock musicians as well as on the U.S. folk revival of the 1960s. They were the first vocal group to become country...

    , "Coal Miner's Daughter
    Coal Miner's Daughter
    Coal Miner's Daughter is a 1980 American biographical film which tells the story of country music icon Loretta Lynn. It stars Sissy Spacek in her Academy Award for Best Actress winning role, Tommy Lee Jones, Beverly D'Angelo and Levon Helm, and was directed by Michael Apted.-Background:The film was...

    " by Loretta Lynn
    Loretta Lynn
    Loretta Lynn is an American country music singer-songwriter, author and philanthropist. Born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky to a coal miner father, Lynn married at 13 years old, was a mother soon after, and moved to Washington with her husband, Oliver Lynn. Their marriage was sometimes tumultuous; he...

    , Tumbling Tumbleweeds
    Tumbling Tumbleweeds
    "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" is a song composed by Bob Nolan, one of the founding members of the Sons of the Pioneers. Although one of the most famous songs associated with cowboys, the song was composed by Nolan back in the 1930s while he was working as a caddy and living in Los Angeles...

    by The Sons of the Pioneers and “Blue Moon of Kentucky
    Blue Moon of Kentucky
    "Blue Moon of Kentucky" is a waltz written in 1946 by bluegrass musician Bill Monroe and recorded by his band, The Blue Grass Boys. The song has since been recorded by many artists, including Elvis Presley....

    ” by Bill Monroe
    Bill Monroe
    William Smith Monroe was an American musician who created the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader...

    .

  • Some of the radio series or broadcasts so far included on the list include: Gang Busters
    Gang Busters
    Gang Busters was an American dramatic radio program heralded as "the only national program that brings you authentic police case histories." It premiered as G-Men, sponsored by Chevrolet, on July 20, 1935.-History:...

    ; Orson Welles
    Orson Welles
    George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

    War of the Worlds broadcast; A Prairie Home Companion
    A Prairie Home Companion
    A Prairie Home Companion is a live radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor. The show runs on Saturdays from 5 to 7 p.m. Central Time, and usually originates from the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, although it is frequently taken on the road...

    ; America's Town Meeting of the Air
    America's Town Meeting of the Air
    America’s Town Meeting of the Air was a public affairs discussion broadcast on radio from 1935 to 1956, mainly on the NBC Blue Network and its successor, ABC Radio...

    ; The Fred Allen Show
    Fred Allen
    Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it...

    ; and Norman Corwin’s
    Norman Corwin
    Norman Lewis Corwin was an American writer, screenwriter, producer, essayist and teacher of journalism and writing...

     We Hold These Truths
    We Hold These Truths
    We Hold These Truths, a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the United States Bill of Rights, was an hour-long radio program that explored American values and aired live on December 15, 1941, the first to be broadcast on all four major networks...

    .

, the spoken words of seven U.S. Presidents are represented on the Registry, including Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...

, Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

, and John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

 is featured twice—for his Fireside Chats
Fireside chats
The fireside chats were a series of thirty evening radio addresses given by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944.-Origin of radio address:...

and his December 8, 1941 address to Congress. Registry items by some Presidents—Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...

 and Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

—either precede or follow their Presidential terms.

External links

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