This Week’s Theme: The National Recording Registry Part One (Pre-1955)

This week we are taking a deep dive into the historical research aspect of the Radio Faux Show. This week’s show is best described as a collection of recordings rather than a playlist of songs because this week’s show is part one of a four-part show about the National Recording Registry. I have been planning this theme for over a year, but I knew it would take a lot of time and research to pull it off correctly. I played around with a variety of ways to present the theme, starting with a single show that contained a variety of selections. I quickly realized that this did not do justice to the sheer volume of excellent content provided by the Registry, and realized that the topic was so interesting that I first wanted to create my own personal playlist of every recording in the collection. With 600 selections in the Registry, and counting, this was an incredibly time-consuming project to accomplish. I knew that once I had a complete collection, or at least as complete as possible using recordings available to me through streaming, I needed to break the theme up into multiple shows to make the research worthwhile for the purposes of the Faux Show. In the end, I decided to create four shows – one with selections recorded before 1955, one with selections recorded from 1955 to the present, one focused on the albums included in the Registry, and one focused on selections I would add to the Registry. This week’s show is Part One and presents the pre-1955 selections.

What is the National Recording Registry?

The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings deemed by the United States Library of Congress to be culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States. The Registry was established by Congress via the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which also created the National Recording Preservation Board. Members of the Board are appointed by the Librarian of Congress, and each year select new recordings for inclusion. Fifty recordings per year were selected from 2002 to 2005, and twenty-five per year have been selected since 2006.

The criteria for selection are:

• Recordings are culturally, historically or aesthetically significant, and/or inform or reflect culture in the United States.
• Recordings are not considered for inclusion in the National Recording Registry if no copy of the recording exists.
• No recording is eligible for inclusion in the National Recording Registry until ten years after the recording’s creation.

Why is the National Recording Registry important?

I ask this question because some people may find the concept to not be as important as I believe it is. After all, this is not a collection of the most popular music of the last 140+ years. It is not a collection focused solely on songs, specific artists, or types of music. It is not a collection of every major event in U.S. history. It is not even focused on the most important political and cultural figures. We live in a time when it seems that everything ever recorded is available at the push of a button, so why worry about conserving these recordings in the Library of Congress?

I believe the answer is that as we move further into the 21^st century and the digital age, it becomes harder for each generation to understand the world that existed before everything was recorded for instantaneous consumption by everyone with access to social media. History, as historians will tell you, is important because if we don’t learn from our past mistakes then we are doomed to repeat them. This is usually attributed to the written and oral history of world events, but recorded history fits into this dogma just as well. I won’t argue that everyone should listen to “Hellhound On My Trail” by Robert Johnson or else be doomed to a life of ignorance and failure. However, I would argue, and have in many past Faux Shows, that the best way to understand the people of the world, past or present, is through their music. The Registry provides not only this musical history lesson, but also a narrative history of paradigm-shifting events throughout the 20^th and into this century.

What can be learned from the National Recording Registry (or, how to best consume dozens of hours of recorded material in a meaningful way)?

I have not listened to every second of the material presented in the Registry, but I listened to at least a little bit of each recording and, once I had it all laid out chronologically, I made some important realizations about the selections.

1. The first and most obvious historical importance of the Registry is the collection of many of the first recordings in human history. These 19^th century recordings are not the kind of thing one would consider good driving music, but they are nevertheless an integral piece of knowledge in discovering the earliest aesthetics of recorded sound.
2. These selections provide a way to listen to the changes in recording technology over the last 140+ years. Moving from year to year provides very subtle changes, at a minimum, and sometimes the difference between one or two years is profound. Just to name a few obvious technological advancements in recording over the decades, the movement from phonoautograph to foil cylinder to recordings imprinted directly onto discs to magnetic audio to analog tape to multi-track tape to stereo recordings to digital recordings is obvious if one listens to even only small bits of the Registry recordings in chronological order. Anyone with a surface-level understanding of the history of the 20^th century can then easily relate these changes to the changes in technology, lifestyle, culture, politics, and all other aspects of life across the century. For many, these basic differences in eras are learned in school via textbooks, so digesting this history in the context of recorded music and narration is refreshing and, for those whose preferred learning method is auditory, is possibly groundbreaking.
3. Decisions about what constitutes a significant recording are subjective, but not near as much as decisions about who should receive a music award or election into a Hall of Fame or other similar institution. There are only 600 recordings selected over 140+ years, but there are no obvious gaps in the history of recordings as presented by the Registry. It is easy to argue about which Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, or Count Basie recording should be included, but I believe that all aspects of recording history are represented, and there are very few selected artists who seem inappropriate to include or artists clearly snubbed from inclusion. My guess is that some obvious selections, such as at least one Madonna song (“Vogue” for example), will be included sooner or later, but that is just one piece of an overall musical period which is already covered by included artists such as Prince, Michael Jackson, and Cyndi Lauper. The same can be said for some famous speeches and audio, such as Lou Gehrig’s “Proudest Man on the Face of the Earth,” Nixon’s “I’m not a crook,” and Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” but most of the best-known speeches of the 20^th century are included.
4. Similarly, the Registry does not attempt to cover the entire history of the world over the last 140+ years, but obvious events such as The Great War, World War II, The Cold War, and 9/11 are preserved. Similarly, specific recordings are included to present shared National experiences, such as life during The Great Depression, the importance of baseball on the early 20^th century, the creation of radio, television, and modern theatre, as well as several important and tragic events that shaped our modern world. One can’t learn the entire history of the U.S. through these recordings, but one can certainly gain an understanding of the struggles and accomplishments of its people.
5. Finally, the recordings are not focused only on American selections. This is important because the history of the U.S. can’t be separated from the history of the world. Most selections are clearly American simply because this is a collection in the United States Library of Congress, but there are several selections from people of other nations that clearly have impacted life in the U.S. over the last 100 years. Going in, I assumed that this would be a weakness of the collection, but it turns out to be a strength.  

This Week’s Selections

There is so much material in the Registry that finding forty-two pieces worthy of inclusion was easy. The difficulty was in narrowing my initial list of over one hundred down to just forty-two. My goal was to present a sampling of types of artists and recordings that spans the first seventy years of recording history. I think I was successful, although I’m sure my selections present a bias toward what I believe to be most important and interesting.  

The 19^th Century: The first recordings

Many of the earliest recordings don’t exist anymore, much less exist on streaming platforms. These are not the types of recordings one would throw on at a party or listen to while shopping. However, there are a few available and I selected some for inclusion and as an educational experience in understanding just how far and how quickly recording technology advanced at the turn of the 20^th century.

Song Selections

Message to Thomas Edison from Colonel George Gouraud (1888 Cylinder Recording): This is the oldest recording I could find on streaming and is one of the oldest surviving recordings. It uses Thomas Edison’s tinfoil recording technology, a major advancement from the original phonoautograph recordings of the mid-19^th century.

Emile Berliner “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” (1890): Berliner invented the gramophone in 1888, the first recording method to imprint grooves onto a disc. This was a major advancement from the tinfoil cylinder. Originally believed to be a possible children’s toy, it is the beginning of the next 100 years of record album technology.

George W. Johnson “The Laughing Song” (1896): Johnson was the first black phonograph recording star. He recorded his own songs and was the best-selling phonograph star before the turn of the century, with sales between 25 and 50 thousand.

1900-1924: Movement from questionable marketing innovation to a musical revolution

The first twenty-five years of the 20^th century found recording technology slowly improving and new forms of music advancing out across the world. During this period, mass production techniques were developed to allow for sales of recordings in the hundreds of thousands. The presence of devices for playing recorded music in households around the world became more and more prevalent. The first major recording labels and stars were born at the start of the century, including the first million-selling artist (opera singer Enrico Caruso). In addition to the opera, classical, and novelty recordings that made up most of the popular recordings of this era, jazz became a new major form of recorded music in 1917 and led to the Jazz Age of the 1920s. By 1920, electrical recording technology was also invented, although it was not ready yet for mass production.

Song selections

Lovey’s Trinidad String Band “Trinidad Paseo” from the New York Recordings of 1912: These are some of the first recordings of music that can be considered jazz and are the earliest jazz recordings in the Registry. The group was performing in New York in 1912 and Columbia Records recorded several songs. This music is now more commonly referred to as calypso, but its similarities to the Dixieland jazz recordings that would sweep the nation in five years are obvious.

Jascha Heifetz “No. 2 Valse Bluette” from his 1917 acoustic recordings for Victor Records: Recorded when he was only sixteen, these were the first recordings for the virtuoso violinist, excluding several lost recordings he made as a 10-year-old in Russia that weren’t discovered until after his death. Recordings such as this changed the future of classical musicians by presenting a method for them to be recognized throughout the world without having to perform live.

James P. Johnson “The Harlem Strut” (1921): Johnson was one of the earliest jazz pianists. His stride piano style was an early ragtime and jazz innovation, and his compositions and recordings were integral in the development of jazz during the 1920s. Among his many accomplishments was his composing the music for “The Charleston” in 1923.

Bessie Smith “Down-Hearted Blues” (1923): Smith was the Empress of the Blues and the most popular blues singer of the 1920’s and ‘30s. This song was her first recording, and one of her most famous, but it was recorded prior to the technological breakthroughs of 1925. After 1925, her recordings became the foundation for the future sound of jazz vocalists such as Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.

Ma Rainey “See See Rider Blues” (1924): Rainey was the Mother of the Blues and one of the premiere vocalists of the pre-Jazz Age era. She was a primary influence on Bessie Smith (Smith started her career as dancer in Ma Rainey’s band). This song is one of the most recorded blues tunes of the 20^th century, and Rainey’s was the first version. The song itself dates to the 19^th century and its theme of an unfaithful lover in combination with its 12-bar chordal and melodic structure are the foundation of the blues.

1925-1934: Electrical Recording and the Origins of Jazz, Blues, and Country

Electrical recording technology, including the use of microphones, was improved enough by 1925 that it became the new recording method. This was the next major shift in recording technology as the clarity of recordings made all older recording methods obsolete overnight. This added to the mass market appeal of recorded music and saw various genres of local music, such as blues, country, and folk, spread out to new audiences. It was also the Jazz Age, which produced the foundations of what would become swing, big band, be-bop, and other modern jazz forms. In addition, flat disc technology was developed in 1929, making cylinder technology obsolete with cylinder production stopping almost overnight.

Song selections

The Golden Gate Orchestra “The Charleston” (1925): This is one of the first recordings to utilize the new recording technologies of 1925. It is now the most recognizable song from the Jazz Age and is a mainstay of pop culture references to the music of the 1920s. The dance associated with the song is still performed one hundred years later.

Jimmie Rodgers “Blue Yodel (T For Texas)” (1927): Rodgers was the first National country music star, and this was the first country music hit. The influence of both Rodgers and this song is vast, opening the door for performers of country, bluegrass, hillbilly, and other Southern folk music to move out from local performance to National stardom.

Blind Willie Johnson “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground” (1927): Johnson was a gospel blues evangelist and street performer who recorded only thirty songs over a three-year period. Although they sold relatively well, he was never well-known or wealthy, and his music was mostly ignored for over thirty years. His slide guitar work, especially on this song, are now landmarks in this style of the blues. If you have never heard this song, you should put it on repeat and listen to it at least ten times. Then listen to it every day for a week until it becomes part of your musical being. This is one of the greatest pieces of recorded music ever produced.

Joe Falcon “Allons a Lafayette” (1928): This was the first Cajun song ever recorded. Falcon had a short recording career and by the end of the ’30s his style of music was replaced by the new sound of Country & Western.

Harry Richman “Puttin’ On The Ritz” (1929): Richman was one of the highest-paid performers of the 1920s and ‘30s. This is the debut performance of the now-classic tune, taken from a terrible early talking picture of the same name. You can decide which version you prefer, this one or the 1980s classic by Taco. I’ll take the original.

Fats Waller “Ain’t Misbehavin’” (1929): Waller was one of the first jazz pianists. He, along with James P. Johnson, developed the stride piano style that led to the music yet to be called jazz. Unlike Johnson, he was also a comedic songwriter and composer for early Broadway musicals. This song is from the 1929 Broadway show Connie’s Hot Chocolates, which featured Louis Armstrong as musical director. Armstrong’s trumpet solo for the song was so fantastic that he was forced to perform it from the stage instead of the orchestra pit. This song is a legendary steppingstone for both the instrumental and vocal jazz to come.

The Boswell Sisters “It’s The Girl” (1931): I’ve written enough about the Boswell Sisters in past Faux Shows (add link) that I’ll just say that this is one of their many great tunes.

Lead Belly “Goodnight Irene” (1933): Lead Belly was a 12-string guitar master and folk/blues vocalist who recorded early versions of many of the greatest folk songs in American history. This is one of his best, but his entire catalog is worthy of attention. If you don’t know about Lead Belly, he is one of the most interesting and worthy-of-research musicians in this week’s show. It is impossible to pay justice to his importance in a few short sentences, so take some time and listen to his work if you aren’t already familiar.

1935-44: Recording Technology Explosion

The advancement of recording technology in the early ‘30s was incredible, with the invention of magnetic tape, stereo sound, multi-track recording, and lacquer coated discs. This is the period that created music production that most people associate with the heyday of vinyl records from the 1940s through the ‘80s. By 1935, recordings sounded light years ahead of those from the turn of the century and radios were beginning to be found in most U.S. households. This led to the development of radio and airplay/sales charts by the 1940s and the combined use of touring, recording, and radio airplay to develop National recording stars.

Song Selections

Patsy Montana “I Want To Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart” (1935): Montana was an early country music star and this was the first million-selling country single by a female artist.

Robert Johnson “Crossroad Blues” (1936): Johnson invented the Delta Blues and recorded all his material in a two-year period. He died in 1938 at the age of twenty-seven. No one is sure how he died, but I have always believed that the Devil he met at the crossroads decided it was time for him to make good on his debt.

Count Basie & His Orchestra “One O’Clock Jump” (1937): This was the theme song for the Count Basie Orchestra and the first recorded R&B song.

Louis Armstrong “When The Saints Go Marching In” (1938): There are several Armstrong recordings in the Registry. I chose this one simply because it is so iconic.

Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet “John, The Revelator” (1938): Gospel music is scattered throughout the Registry, but I went with the tune that I can’t stop singing. This group was formed by four high school friends in 1934, started recording in 1937, and are still active today (many members later). They are one of the earliest vocal quartets to be recorded and this is one of their first recordings. Groups like this laid the foundation for doo wop and other vocal harmony groups in the 1950s.

The Ink Spots “If I Didn’t Care” (1939): Even more important than vocal groups like Golden Gate Quartet are The Ink Spots. The Ink Spots are direct influences on vocal harmony groups who followed, including the now-standard technique of adding a spoken word section over the bridge. This was their first hit, sold over nineteen million copies, and is the eighth best-selling single of all time.

Judy Garland “Over The Rainbow” (1939): The Wizard of Oz was the first color film and this is the song that made its teenage star Judy Garland a superstar overnight.

Pablo Casals “Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor (Bach)” (1939): Casals was one of the greatest recorded cellists of all-time and most successful of the first half of the 20^th century.  

Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial “Gospel Train” (1939): Anderson was a groundbreaking African American singer who sang opera, spirituals, gospel, and other forms of music. She was possibly the most important musician in the fight for civil rights, spending her entire life fighting against racism and segregation while maintaining her place as one of the greatest vocalists in the world. This performance is a landmark event in the fight for civil rights. Anderson was denied permission to perform in Washington, D.C. at Constitution Hall by the famously racist, segregationist, and discriminatory organization Daughters of the American Revolution. This prompted immediate outrage by the NAACP and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (who promptly resigned from the DAR under extreme political pressure to do so). President Roosevelt then allowed a separate event to occur at the Lincoln Memorial, for free and for the public. Over seventy-five thousand attended the open-air event, and it was broadcast over radio to millions of listeners. The entire performance is breathtaking and its importance in the fight for equality can’t be under-stated. History such as this is what should be taught to all elementary school students.

Billie Holiday “Strange Fruit” (1939): This is the greatest song ever written and recorded about racial hatred and bigotry. I used to assume that everyone knew songs like this, but I no longer trust that is true. If you don’t know this one then listen, learn, and (if you feel the need) weep.

Jimmie Davis “You Are My Sunshine” (1940): This is the original version of one of the greatest songs ever written. Davis is a great example of someone who needs to have their musical identity separated from their public identity. As a musician, he gave the world a song that has enriched the lives of millions over the last hundred years. As the Governor of Louisiana, he did some good for the state but also supported segregation and set back his states’ ability to find progress for decades. It is not a coincidence that I have listed Marian Anderson, Billie Holiday, and Jimmie Davis together. Sometimes music can be a force for change and sometimes it has no relation to the performer’s views or ability to see the world with clarity.  

Sister Rosetta Tharpe “Down By The Riverside” (1944): Tharpe was the first great gospel star, but she is even more important as a guitarist and innovator of rock and roll. Her mix of gospel and R&B with an innovative electric guitar style influenced most of the pioneers of 1950s rock and roll, including Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins. This is joyous music that everyone needs to know.

The International Sweethearts of Rhythm “Jump Children” (1944): They were the first integrated, all-female group in the United States. They enjoyed moderate success in the 1940s but were quickly forgotten for the next twenty-five years. Their music and importance resurfaced as part of the feminist movement of the 1960s and ‘70s and resulted in their reunion and the reissue of their recordings.

Woody Guthrie “This Land Is Your Land” (1944): Guthrie and Lead Belly were the two most important folk musicians of the early half of the 20^th century. Guthrie’s guitar proudly stated This Machine Kills Fascists and his music lived up to that message. His songs are now some of the most misunderstood of the era, often looked upon as statements of National pride, but all of them are sharply cutting attacks on the problems that plagued our nation seventy-five years ago and are still present today. Originally written as “God Blessed America For Me,” this version of his most famous song leaves out most of the best lyrics (found in the third and fifth verses). I’ll add them here for completeness

Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property,
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing —
That side was made for you and me.

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people —
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
This land was made for you and me.

1945-1954: The Post-War era and lead-up to Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, and the Billboard Top 40

After the end of the Second World War, the U.S. entered a new era of prosperity. In terms of recording technology, the main benefit was the production of vinyl records by all the major recording labels by 1948. The invention of multi-track recording by Les Paul became a studio staple in the early ‘50s. All recording was now done using tape and the sound quality created by all these innovations made anything recorded prior sound old-fashioned. This technology combined with new styles of music such as be-bop, cool jazz, R&B, jump blues, country & western, hillbilly, and early rock and roll, and led to a revolution in record sales, radio charts, and the youth movement that drove it all. The invention of television and improved radio coverage added to this new era of recorded sound and set the stage for Elvis Presley to take over the world.

Song selections

Louis Jordan “Caldonia” (1945): Jordan was one of the inventors of the music that would become rock and roll. This was one of his first and most popular songs in that style.

Charlie Parker “Ko Ko” (1945): This is one of the first popular bebop recordings. It features Parker on sax, Max Roach on drums, and Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet. It is often credited to Miles Davis on trumpet and Gillespie on piano but is now believed to not include Davis, although he was present at the session. In any case, it is one of the tunes that led to all jazz to come.

Bill Monroe & The Blue Grass Boys “Blue Moon of Kentucky” (1946): This is one of the greatest country & western songs ever written. It has been recorded by hundreds (thousands?) of musicians and is the State Bluegrass Song of Kentucky (which basically makes it their State Song).

John Lee Hooker “Boogie Chillen’” (1948): This is the first of dozens of versions that Hooker recorded of this song during his fifty-plus year career. It is his theme song and presents his version of the country blues, which he called boogie, and not the more familiar boogie-woogie style of country music popular at the time. It was the first electric blues song to hit #1 on the R&B charts.

Stubby Kaye “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ The Boat” from Guys and Dolls (1950): This is the only song I selected from the many 1940s and ‘50s Broadway musicals in the Registry. I selected it over tunes from South Pacific, Oklahoma, and others simply because this is my favorite musical of the era, and this is my favorite song from the musical.

Les Paul and Mary Ford “How High The Moon” (1951): Les Paul invented the electric guitar and multi-track recording. Mary Ford was the first person to multi-track her vocals. For that reason, this is a historic recording. It is also just a lot of fun to listen to the music of this duo.

Big Mama Thornton “Hound Dog” (1952): Elvis Presley made this song, one of the first written by Leiber & Stoller, a nationwide hit. Everyone who cares knows about Elvis’ performance of this song on Milton Berle’s television show that made the sponsors furious and launched a thousand teenage dreams of becoming the next big thing. Thornton’s version is the original and superior version. Rock and roll was born with songs this like.

Kitty Wells “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” (1952): Wells was the pioneering female country star who made it possible for all women country artists after her to record and compete with their male contemporaries. This was the first #1 country hit by a woman.

The Penguins “Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)” (1954): This group was one of the first doo wop groups to gain National attention. This song was the first R&B crossover hit.

Bill Haley & His Comets “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock” (1954): This is the song that started it all. Many other songs laid the foundation, but rock and roll was here to stay once this tune slipped out into the National conscience against the wishes of every God-fearing, rebellion-squashing, hypocritical adult across the U.S.

Famous Speeches and Audio

The Registry is filled with many of the great audio clips of the 20^th century. I left out almost all of them, including those by Winston Churchill and Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. I also left out comedy clips by several people, including Abbott and Costello, and news clips by Edward R. Murrow and other war-era reporters. In the end, I included three of my favorites – these are clips I have known for almost my entire life.

Selections

Herbert Morrison “Hindenburg Disaster” (1937): What started out as basic news coverage of the landing of the Hindenburg airship after one of its cross-Atlantic journeys from Frankfurt, Germany to New Jersey, United States horrifically turned into one of the most heartbreaking recordings of raw human emotion ever recorded. The drastic change from basic narration to gut-wrenching horror occurred in mere seconds. The phrase Oh, the humanity is now part of our shared history, and, almost one hundred years later, Morrison’s narration is still impossible to hear without inciting an emotional response in the listener. Most people believe that the coverage was televised due to later combinations of the audio with visual footage for theater news reels, but the original coverage was aired via radio. This is what makes the audio even more terrifying. Without the visuals, the impact of the event on Morrison can be felt through his words, and inability to even speak, in a way much stronger than mere images can provide. This is one of the greatest sound clips ever recorded.

Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Mercury on the Air radio presentation “Episode 4” (1938): This presentation of H.G. Wells’ novel as a live radio news broadcast led to panic among the people listening, some of whom thought it was an actual news broadcast. This story has become embellished over the years, but the actual occurrence of panic was very rare. What is fact is that the outrage against Welles by national news outlets after his broadcast cast him as a trickster and gave him the attention required to produce his groundbreaking film Citizen Kane in 1941.

Russ Hodges broadcast of Bobby Thompsons’ Shot Heard ‘Round The World (Brooklyn Dodgers vs. New York Giants)” (1951): In many ways, this is just one of hundreds of audio clips of a sports team winning a game in dramatic fashion. All sports fans probably have their favorite moment when their favorite team won a game like this. Seventy-five years later, most people can’t (nor should they) comprehend the impact of an underdog baseball team defeating the favored team in this way, and it wasn’t even a World Series game. Both teams were from New York, which now makes the history of the event even less important in the context of 21^st century sport. At the time, however, baseball was the only sport that mattered in the U.S. and the game was listened to on radio by millions and watched on television by millions more. This was, at the time, the most dramatic sports event ever recorded. Looking back now, I find it interesting for the simple fact that Hodges, much like Herbert Morrison (but for obviously different reasons), allows his emotions to get the best of him. Whether or not you care about baseball or sports in general, this recording presents raw human emotion that is seldom heard in our modern-day world of constant media overload and sixty-minute news cycles. I have never cared about these teams, much less these teams in 1951, but when I listen to this I feel like something incredible has happened and it makes me feel joy for those involved.

That concludes the breakdown for this week’s selections. Next week’s show will highlight more from The National Recording Registry, with selections from 1955 to the beginning of this century.

Thanks for listening (and reading)!

Track List

Track	Artist	Song Title
1	William E. Gladstone	Message to Edison
2	Judy Garland	Over the Rainbow
3	Billie Holiday & Her Orchestra	Strange Fruit
4	Blind Willie Johnson	Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground
5	Woody Guthrie	This Land Is Your Land
6	James P. Johnson	The Harlem Strut
7	Charlie Parker’s Reboppers	Ko Ko
8	Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet	John, The Revelator
9	John Lee Hooker	Boogie Chillen’
10	Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five	Caldonia
11	Les Paul and Mary Ford	How High The Moon
12	Jascha Heifetz	No. 2 Valse Bluette
13	Orson Welles	War of the Worlds (Episode 4)
14	Robert Johnson	Cross Road Blues
15	Jimmie Rodgers	Blue Yodel (T For Texas)
16	Patsy Montana	I Wanna Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart
17	Kitty Wells	It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels
18	Boswell Sisters	It’s The Girl
19	Harry Richman	Puttin’ On The Ritz
20	Golden Gate Orchestra	The Charleston
21	Herbert Morrison	The Hindenburg Disaster
22	Marian Anderson	Gospel Train
23	Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra	When The Saints Go Marching In
24	International Sweethearts of Rhythm	Jump Children
25	Count Basie & His Orchestra	One O’Clock Jump
26	Stubby Kaye	Sit Down You’re Rockin’ The Boat
27	Pablo Casals	Cello Suite No. 2 In D Minor
28	Emile Berliner	Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
29	George W. Johnson	The Laughing Song
30	Lead Belly	Good Night Irene
31	Ma Rainey	See See Rider Blues
32	Lovey’s Trinidad String Band	Trinidad Paseo
33	Joe Falcon	Lafayette (Allons a Lafayette)
34	Bill Monroe & The Bluegrass Boys	Blue Moon Of Kentucky
35	Jimmie Davis	You Are My Sunshine
36	Buddy Blattner	Bobby Thomson’s “Short Heard ‘Round The World”
37	Fats Waller	Ain’t Misbehavin’
38	Bessie Smith	Downhearted Blues
39	Sister Rosetta Tharpe	Down By The Riverside
40	Big Mama Thornton	Hound Dog
41	Ink Spots	If I Didn’t Care
42	Penguins, The	Earth Angel
43	Bill Haley & His Comets	(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock

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