Radio Faux Show Volume 3, Number 17: National Recording Registry (2023)

Radio Faux Show Volume 3, Number 17: National Recording Registry (2023)

It is not a coincidence that I paired the last Faux Show about Rock and Roll Hall of Fame snubs with this one. This show celebrates the 2023 additions to the National Recording Registry. While the Rock Hall continues its sexist and discriminatory vision of music, the National Recording Registry continues to shine a light on the recordings that have defined the last 140 years of recorded music. Many would presuppose that a collection of music created by a government agency would fail to present an apolitical, open-minded, and fully inclusive vision. Anyone who thinks that does not understand the importance of the Library of Congress. This importance is best presented by the National Recording Registry, which has once again succeeded in totality with its new additions to this collection.

If you don’t know what the National Recording Registry is,

you can check out the Radio Faux Show Series about the Registry.

I know that most people will only listen to a sliver of the music of the last 140 years during their entire lifetime. The average music listener knows the styles of music and songs that they like and never attempts to delve deeper into the vast sea of music available to them. I know that I am an outlier in my lifetime interest in learning as much music as I can. This is not a criticism of people who don’t share my interest. However, anyone who understands the joy and understanding that can be discovered in listening to all the music and not just the latest garbage released by Jason Aldean, Kanye West, or Machine Gun Kelly can’t help but feel a sense of loss for anyone who doesn’t attempt to expand their musical knowledge. As I get older and learn more each day about the history of music, I find the National Recording Registry collection to be even more relevant as a voice of reason and understanding in the world in which we live. I have given up hope that the people of the world will ever stop careening down the current path of natural, social, spiritual, and political destruction upon which we are headed, but if there is anything that can help slow down this terrifying forward progression toward doom, it is music. My wish is that the education of future generations of American children includes curriculum designed around the arts, starting with a national emphasis on the music of the Registry.

2023 Selections

Twenty-five new selections are made each year for inclusion in the Registry. The selections are always a diverse collection, spanning decades and all variety of audio recordings. The 2023 selections range from 1908 to 2003, and include news reporting, classical, mariachi, jazz, R&B, blues, gospel, pop, and rock. With only 600 recordings included so far, the Registry is still able to easily draw from the wide variety of recorded history. This year’s selections are a great addition to the collection. I’ve organized them into the same categories that I used in my original Registry Faux Shows.

Pre-1955

The main theme of the pre-1955 selections for 2023 inclusion is local folk tradition. Most music recorded in the early part of the 20th century is now integral in understanding the traditions, evolution, and importance of that music on the music of today.

Cuarteto Coculense: The First Mariachi Recordings (1907-1909)

Although it is often parodied in tv shows and movies, mariachi music is a serious form of folk music that, like all forms of folk music, draws upon the human condition (love, grief, joy, etc.) to create a diverse range of emotion. Like most folk music, mariachi was originally a regional form of music. Also, like most folk music, it originated from centuries of local music tradition before resulting in the sound currently associated with it. It originated in the Mexican state of Jalisco and other Western-Central Mexican states and did not become popular nationally until the turn of the 20th century. Modern mariachi music often includes the iconic trumpet sound now associated with it, but that was a reaction to the popularity of jazz and Cuban music in the 1920s and was not included in these early recordings. The first mariachi music was performed with string instruments, and that is the makeup of the Cuarteto Coculense. At the turn of the 20th century, the Mexican government’s focus on creating a National Heritage included music. This quartet was invited to perform for the president in 1905, and in 1907 they began recording their collection of songs. Mariachi quickly became the most popular dance music in Mexico, and within twenty years radio broadcasts spread the sound of mariachi across the country as the most marketable music. Like most modern music, from blues to jazz to rock, pop, and soul, the sounds of the music have changed over the last 100 years, but the heart of the music can still be found in these old recordings.

Mariachi in 1908
The national importance of mariachi was embedded in Mexican culture by 1936. The movie Allá en el Rancho Grande starred Tito Guizar and began a decades-long love of the music in film.
Mariachi is still going strong 120 years later.

Jazz, Blues, and Gospel

The history of jazz, blues, and gospel can be found throughout the pre-1955 selections of the Registry. Three more examples were added in 2023.

One of the first blues recordings that can be called a hit was “St. Louis Blues” by W.C. Handy and his Memphis Blues Band. It was first recorded in 1922 and is now a standard of the big band jazz/blues repertory. One of the songs that defines the Jazz Age of the 1920s is “Sugar Foot Stomp” by Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra, featuring Louis Armstrong on cornet. It heralded the dominance of jazz as the dance music of the era. Both of these songs are definitive examples of the origins of their respective genres.

The original recording of “St. Louis Blues”: composed in 1914 and recorded in 1922
W.C. Handy performs “St. Louis Blues” live in 1949.
With “Sugar Foot Stomp”, Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong helped invent jazz solos with performances like Armstrong presents here, starting at 1:05.

The Fairfield Four performed the gospel standard “Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around” for years as a tradional vocal song before they added instrumentation and amplification in 1947. This was one of the definitive post-WWII gospel tunes and merged the older Jubilee Gospel style with the modern sound of late 1940s R&B. I don’t listen to a lot of gospel, but when I do it is almost always this style that was perfected by groups like Fairfield Four, Swan Silvertones, and Soul Stirrers. The future of rock and soul music was partially born from these gospel recordings.

Dorothy Thompson

Dorothy Thompson was a pioneer in the field of journalism. Known as The First Lady Of American Journalism, everyone in the United States should know her name as well as they know Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Dan Rather. But, she was a woman, so…I guess not. Her inclusion in the Registry is my favorite type of recording in the collection because it is not music. Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, Thompson covered politics and culture in Europe. She was a print journalist for many years and interviewed some of the most influential people of the time, including Terence MacSwiney, Sigmund Freud, and Adolph Hitler (at the start of his rise to power in 1931). Her 1934 book I Saw Hitler, and her anti-Nazi stance, led to her being the first American journalist thrown out of Nazi Germany. In 1936 she began writing a syndicated column called On The Record. She quickly became one of the most influential journalists in the United States and within a couple of years was a popular broadcast journalist as well. She was arguably the most influential woman in the U.S. for several years, serving as the first woman looked to by other women to receive and understand the news of the world. Prior to her groundbreaking work as a journalist, women had to rely on their husbands and other men to receive the news because they did not have any other options. At the start of World War II, Thompson rivaled Eleanor Roosevelt as the most influential woman in the U.S.

Her inclusion in the Registry is specifically focused on her series of daily reports from Europe at the start of World War II. From August 23 to September 6, 1939, she used her decades of experience covering the politics of Europe to present some of the most insightful, thoughtful, and truthful news of the situation. There are dozens of news recordings of that fateful week in world history, but only one series presented by a woman. More importantly, her analysis was one of the strongest of the time.

Dorothy Thompson reports on Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 3, 1939.
Dorothy Thompson interview for British media five months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
While looking for Dorothy Thompson audio, I found her guest appearance on this old radio quiz show called Information Please. It is an early version of shows like QI and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.

1955 – Present

The music of the era following the birth of Rock and Roll is already very well-represented in the Registry, but there are always gaps to fill in a historical record of this scope. Unlike the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Registry is attempting to increase the inclusion of female artists in the collection, and several important additions were made in 2023, along with some other obvious recordings by men.

The 1960s: Four Singles

The Four Seasons (aka Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons) were one of the last vocal groups to spring from the sound of the 1950s and find success before The Beatles changed the world. Their first single was “Sherry” in 1962. Incredibly, especially for a group who started in the early ’60s, The Four Seasons sold over 100 million records. They were an amazing hit-making machine who were able to survive in both the pre- and post-Beatles era.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XieZAjBTkr4
Among the dozens of iconic Vietnam-era protest songs, “What The World Needs Now” is one of the best. Its timeless message and melody, composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, is still relevant sixty years later (especially since the world has changed very little during that time). Originally composed for Dionne Warwick (who ridiculously turned it down), it was given to Jackie DeShannon and immediately became her signature song. It is now one of the most well-known songs ever written.
While the world of pop music in 1966 was focused on The British Invasion, Motown, and Bob Dylan, Koko Taylor had a hit with one of the definitive examples of Chicago blues. “Wang Dang Doodle” is Taylor’s signature song and still a joy to listen to over sixty years later.
In 1967, while pop music was obsessed with psychedelic music and country music was drowning in the Nashville Sound, Bobbie Gentry recorded her country crossover classic “Ode To Billie Joe.” Sounding unlike almost all other country music of the time, and set firmly in a world becoming more numb each day to the violence presented on the news coming out of Vietnam, the song weaves a mysterious tale about a suicide met with a lack of empathy or concern. Like all great 4-minute story songs, the imagery that Gentry is able to present is incredible. The tone-deaf family eating black-eyed peas while talking about the death of their daughter’s boyfriend is still shocking today, and by the end the listener is left feeling incredibly uncomfortable and looking for clarity in the story they have just heard. It is almost sixty years later, and this song still resonates with anyone hearing it for the first time. Listeners all have their own thoughts about what was thrown off the bridge, but that is not the point. This song remains a poignant example of the lack of humanity still present in the world today.

The 1970s: Four Singles

I don’t have much to say about the 1971 song “Imagine.” If you don’t understand how important this message is fifty years after John Lennon and Yoko Ono composed it, you need to practice some self-reflection.
The song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” was written in 1971 by some guys who later became Starland Vocal Band (they wrote “Afternoon Delight”). They wrote it for John Denver and it is arguably the most important country/pop crossover song ever recorded. It defines the soft rock sound of the early ’70s. It made country music a National music, before Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and Kenny Rogers became country crossover superstars. John Denver was the first country crossover superstar. The song has special meaning for me as an integral part of my childhood. It is possibly the song I heard more than any other song in the early 1970s, and I still love it.
“Stairway to Heaven” was released in 1971 on Led Zeppelin’s fourth album. If you haven’t heard it, go ahead and listen to it. It is kind of famous.
“Margaritaville” is possibly the most popular song to be hated by so many. For those who love Jimmy Buffett (called Parrotheads), this is their anthem. For others, the opening lines of the song can actually induce seizures. This is why the Registry is so great. It doesn’t matter if you like “Stairway to Heaven” or “Margaritaville.” That is not the point. The fact is that they are both anthems that measurable chunks of the U.S. population have devoted their lifetimes to. Getting the Led out and wasting away in Margaritaville are ways of life, whether or not you want to join their respective societies.

The 1980s and 1990s: Three Singles

If you were alive in 1983, you know that Flashdance ruled the cinema and the airwaves. The theme song, “What A Feeling,” was composed by dance producer/legend Giorgio Moroder, Keith Forsey, and Fame star Irene Cara.
The world was introduced to the genius of Annie Lennox in 1983 when MTV started airing the video for the Eurythmics‘ classic “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This).” There are plenty of iconic songs from the ’80s, but this is one of the best. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who doesn’t like this song. It is synth-pop perfection.
We love holiday music at the Faux household, and we understand that holiday songs are more like jazz than like pop music because although there are specific songs by specific artists that everyone likes to hear each year, most holiday music is based on standards. It isn’t the artist as much as the song being performed. Some people may have a favorite version of “Jingle Bells,” but there are plenty of versions that are enjoyable to listen to. I doubt that anyone who likes holiday music would turn off Frank Sinatra’s version of “Jingle Bells” because they only want to hear Brian Setzer’s version. However, there are a few versions of holiday songs by the original artists that hold a special place in the holiday music canon. These include “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby and “The Christmas Song” by Mel Torme. Also on this short list is “All I Want For Christmas (Is You)” by Mariah Carey. Songwriters had all but given up hope of writing another holiday standard by the time she composed her classic in 1994. Songwriters have now spent the last thirty years trying, in vain, to recreate her success. That is the beauty of a true holiday standard. There are only a few, they don’t come around very often, and they live forever. While the Rock Hall continues to make Carey a prime snub, the Registry has recognized her for this once-in-a-lifetime achievement.

Complete Albums

Most of the Registry collection is comprised of singles and audio recordings, but they occasionally include entire albums if they are historically important enough to warrant inclusion. That is obviously a subjective decision. For example, is the song “Stairway to Heaven” any more important than the album Led Zeppelin IV? Both are synonymous with the entire genre of classic rock. Either way, most album selections they have made have been defensible. This year they added five very diverse albums to the collection.

Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (1970)

Full disclosure: I’m not a huge fan of David Crosby, Steven Stills, Graham Nash, or Neil Young. I love The Byrds, but it isn’t because of David Crosby. Buffalo Springfield have one good song. I like the Hollies hits more than anything else Graham Nash has done. Neil Young has written some great songs, but I don’t find him to be as talented as any of his other songwriting contemporaries, such as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, or Paul Simon. He is a lot like Leonard Cohen in that I appreciate what he does but I don’t enjoy listening to it. For this reason, I don’t care much whether this album is in the Registry. I understand the rationale for its inclusion, but I won’t be listening to it. Therefore, I won’t say any more about it.

Synchronicity by The Police (1983)

This album is a perfect example of how a band’s best album is not their most popular or most important. All members of the Faux household are Police fans. They are one of Ms. Faux’s top five favorite bands. We all believe that Stewart Copeland is one of the best rock drummers in history. And we all have a favorite Police album that is not Synchronicity. In fact, we all agree that this is their worst album. It is as much a Sting solo album, paving the way for the tedious, mainstream music he has made for the last forty years, as it is a Police album. If there weren’t flashes of Copeland’s drumming brilliance throughout the record and a couple of great songs (like “Synchronicity II” and “King of Pain”), it would be barely distinguishable as the same band who recorded their first four albums. However, anyone who was there in 1983, listening to pop radio, watching MTV, and checking the Billboard Charts, knows that there have been very few albums to make as much impact as this one. If the Registry had chosen to only select the single “Every Breath You Take,” it would have made sense, but one can’t argue the sheer immensity of this album. Personally, I will never listen to this record from start to finish again in my lifetime (at least not intentionally). Songs like “Mother,” “Miss Gradenko,” and “Murder By Numbers” show a band running out of ideas and do not deserve repeat listening, especially when one can play Zenyatta Mondatta or Ghost In The Machine from start to finish and not find a single weak track. Most Police fans know that the world would be a better place if the band had stayed together and made more albums like their first four, but now that we know what Sting’s vision of music really was we also know that would not have happened. If nothing else, we can all be satisfied with those first four albums and understand Synchronicity for what it is – a record produced at the right time and one of the most iconic albums of the MTV era.

Like a Virgin by Madonna (1984)

Madonna is now a legend. Her importance and influence are inarguable. Her iconic status now makes it hard for people who weren’t there in 1984 to understand how groundbreaking the album Like A Virgin was. Before this release, Madonna was a dance music artist who had released a couple of moderately successful dance hits. With this album, Madonna broke down all of the barriers that held women back from being as successful as their male counterparts and forced MTV and rest of the conservative music media companies to move out of their ridiculous 1950s view of wholesomeness and into the sexually driven artistic world that artists like Prince and Madonna were forcing them to enter. In addition to the music, Madonna’s fashion style was the most influential since The Beatles forced parents around the world to accept long hair mop tops. It is impossible to imagine that the world of entertainment, fashion, and pop culture would be the same if this record had not existed. It is the embodiment of everything the Registry attempts to recognize.

Black Codes (From the Underground) by Wynton Marsalis (1985)

Whether or not you believe Wynton Marsalis is as important as he thinks he is (you can probably guess my opinion based on that sentence), it is probably impossible not to include him in the Registry. If he has to be included, it makes sense to select his album Black Codes (from the Underground) because it showcases the musicians who would become known as the young lions. This is straight-ahead jazz recorded at a time when straight-ahead jazz was not being recorded as much as more modern styles of jazz. For some, this record is important because it brought straight-ahead jazz back into the spotlight. For others, it represents a now forty-year run of popular jazz being bland, unadventurous, and conservative. If you believe that jazz should be at the forefront of evolving musical concepts, the last forty years have been a disappointment. At best, jazz has become an offshoot of hip hop and experimental composition – at worst it has stagnated in the past, mostly due to the vision of artists like Wynton Marsalis and records like this one. The main problem is not that old styles of jazz should be left behind – I have no issue with people recording albums of jazz that is familiar and unadventurous. The problem is that Marsalis has spent forty years conning the elitist world of jazz aficionados (you can read that to mean rich white people who support the arts) into believing that the past should be preserved at the expense of the future. There is a reason that the 1970s was the most exciting era in the history of jazz and jazz is now a struggling art form that can’t seem to find a common voice. That reason is the tension created between true jazz artists and people like Wynton Marsalis.

All Hail The Queen by Queen Latifah (1989)

You can read the past few years of Faux Show posts about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s problems to know that I love the inclusion of Queen Latifah in the Registry. She is as important as any of her male hip hop contemporaries and it is great to see her receive some recognition. I personally would have selected Salt ‘n’ Pepa to fill this role, but you can’t deny the importance of Queen Latifah in the history of rap (which is basically the history of popular music over the last 30 years). All Hail the Queen is her best and one of the best rap albums of the old school era.

Four More Selections

In addition to popular singles and albums from the 20th century, the National Recording Registry includes many selections of a variety of other recordings important to the history of the world. This year’s selections include an iconic video game, an audio book, a song that invented a genre that is still dominating the global sound of music, and a mesmerizing piece of 21st century Classical music.

Koji Kondo composed the “Super Mario Theme” in 1985. If you don’t have this simple tune burned into your memory, go buy a Nintendo game system and enter the 20th century. This composition is more important than every John Williams film score, every Henry Mancini television theme, and every Drake album.
It has been almost twenty years since Daddy Yankee recorded the first international reggaeton hit, “Gasolina,” in 2004. The immense popularity of this song has made reggaeton a staple of dance, Latin, and popular music. I really don’t like this song, or reggaeton music, but I can’t deny its influence.
Carl Sagan and thousands of other scientists have been telling the world about our planet’s impending doom if we don’t do something to change our path toward destruction. This isn’t politics. Climate change is real. The threat of nuclear destruction is real. Our ignorance toward the most important fact known to generation after generation is absurd. If you don’t believe that the planet is dying and humankind is doomed unless we do something to save the planet, you don’t deserve to enjoy any of the wonders of the Earth that Carl Sagan championed for his entire public life, including in his 1994 classic Pale Blue Dot.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for composition. She was the first woman to receive dozens of other honors in the area of classical composition. Her 2003 composition Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra presents a haunting musical vision of the events of September 11, 2001 in four movements. Performed by Northwest Chamber Orchestra with David Shifrin on clarinet, the piece is a perfect presentation of the emotions of 9/11.

And those are the 25 selections for the National Recording Registry in 2023. As always, I have provided a playlist of the recordings. Instead of a simple chronological sequence, I have attempted to track them in a manner that provides as much logical flow as possible with 25 recordings from such a diverse selection.

Amazon Music

Spotify

I have also added them to my complete National Recording Registry collection playlist for anyone who wants to listen to the overwhelming diversity of recordings in the Registry.

Recordings List (Chronological Order)

RecordingArtistYear Recorded
The Very First Mariachi RecordingsCuarteto Coculense1907-1909
St. Louis Blues (single)W.C. Handy’s Memphis Blues Band1922
Sugar Foot Stomp (single)Fletcher Henderson1925
Commentary and Analysis of the European Situation for NBC RadioDorothy Thompson1939, 8/23-9/6
Don’t You Let Nobody Turn You Around (single)Fairfield Four1947
Sherry (single)Four Seasons1962
What the World Needs Now (single)Jackie DeShannon1965
Wang Dang Doodle (single)Koko Taylor1966
Ode To Billie Joe (single)Bobbie Gentry1967
Déjà VuCrosby, Stills, Nash, and Young1970
Imagine (single)John Lennon1971
Stairway to Heaven (single)Led Zeppelin1971
Take Me Home, Country Roads (single)John Denver1971
Margaritaville (single)Jimmy Buffett1977
Flashdance…What A Feeling (single)Irene Cara1983
Sweet Dreams Are Made of This (single)Eurythmics1983
SynchronicityPolice1983
Like a VirginMadonna1984
Black Codes (From the Underground)Wynton Marsalis1985
Super Mario ThemeKoji Kondo1985
All Hail the QueenQueen Latifah1989
All I Want For Christmas Is YouMariah Carey1994
Pale Blue DotCarl Sagan1994
Gasolina (single)Daddy Yankee2004
Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber OrchestraNorthwest Chamber Orchestra, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich composer2003 (9/12)

Leave a comment