By Allison Stewart, Special To The Washington Post
Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow,” N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton,” and the 1971 debut broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered” are among the recordings set to be included on the National Recording Registry, the Library of Congress announced Wednesday.
Among other selections on the omnivorous list are Talking Heads’ “Remain in Light,” the original version of “Hound Dog” cut by Big Mama Thornton in 1952, Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family,” and a recording of a 1957 baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds announced by Vin Scully.
Twenty-five recordings are selected each year for the registry, which now includes 475 audio recordings. (There’s a sister list for movies, the National Film Registry.) Entries are chosen “either because they were hit recordings that somehow captured a moment for us or a particular feeling that endures, or things which are much less well known, but which are still vital to our history and our identity and our entire sense of self,” says Matthew Barton, the library’s curator of recorded sound.
The selection process works like this: A genre-hopping list of recordings is considered by the National Recording Preservation Board, which is partly composed of artists, archivists, and executives from the record industry (although anyone can make a nomination online). The final choices are made by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, after a period of judicious list-whittling and mostly polite debate.
“It can get heated,” admits Barton, who is a member of the board. “It’s not like people are saying, ‘What? I hate that band!’ It’s never like that.” Conflict sometimes arises when board members want to nominate an artist whose work already appears in the registry, he says. “There’s no rule against it, but when you look at all the recordings out there you have to ask yourself, are we ready to start repeating ourselves?”
Talking Heads’ groundbreaking, Afro-funk-influenced 1980 album “Remain in Light” is the first recording from the band to make the list. Like many selections, it was chosen more for its unique examination of the American experience than its commercial success, which was modest. “Probably that’s a good one,” said the band’s former frontman David Byrne in a phone interview. “That wasn’t one of our most popular ones. There were other, later ones that sold a little more. You never know.”
Most registry selections are works by American artists, though Radiohead, Pink Floyd and U2 have previously made the cut, and David Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” appears on this year’s list. There are few hip-hop selections – “Straight Outta Compton” is only the sixth – and those chosen have usually been golden-era-and-slightly-later rap offerings such as Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” and Public Enemy’s “Fear of a Black Planet.”
Recordings must be at least 10 years old, though most are older, says Barton, the better to consider them in the fullness of time. The youngest selection on this year’s list is soprano Renée Fleming’s 1997 release “Signatures.” The oldest is an early collection of cylinder recordings made by Col. George Gouraud, a Civil War hero and friend of Thomas Edison’s, in 1888.
Entries chosen for the registry are preserved in both a metaphoric sense (their cultural virtue is enshrined forever) and a physical one: The works will be stored in a giant vault, which is one reason only recordings with physical versions are eligible.
This sense of permanence appeals to singer-songwriter Don McLean, whose 1971 hit “American Pie” made the list this year. “It’s a folk song that’s known by everybody by heart that is gonna last forever, because no matter what happens, people will always remember it,” McLean said on the phone from his home in Palm Desert, Calif. “If there’s a nuclear bomb attack, a couple people will be sitting in a cave somewhere, trying to remember all the lyrics to the song. Everybody else will be wiped out.” (That’s not hyperbole. The recordings are stored in a decommissioned bunker dug into the side of a mountain in Virginia’s Culpeper County that was built to withstand a nuclear blast.)
“American Pie” was a No. 1 hit and one of the most totemic songs in rock-and-roll history, but, unlike many of the registry’s other selections, it has earned little in the way of official honors, at least until now. “I don’t think I’ve ever really been recognized the way some artists have been over the years, but I haven’t tried,” McLean says. “I’m really delighted that the government has taken notice of me in this way, and not by tapping my phone or something.”
The complete list of this year’s selections:
– The 1888 London cylinder recordings of Col. George Gouraud (1888)
– “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (singles), Manhattan Harmony Four (1923); Melba Moore and Friends (1990)
– “Puttin’ on the Ritz” (single), Harry Richman (1929)
– “Over the Rainbow” (single), Judy Garland (1939)
– “I’ll Fly Away” (single), The Chuck Wagon Gang (1948)
– “Hound Dog” (single), Big Mama Thornton (1952)
– “Saxophone Colossus,” Sonny Rollins (1956)
– The Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds, announced by Vin Scully (Sept. 8, 1957)
– “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs,” Marty Robbins (1959)
– “The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery,” Wes Montgomery (1960)
– “People,” Barbra Streisand (1964)
– “In the Midnight Hour” (single), Wilson Pickett (1965)
– “Amazing Grace” (single), Judy Collins (1970)
– “American Pie” (single), Don McLean (1971)
– “All Things Considered,” first broadcast (May 3, 1971)
– “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,” David Bowie (1972)
– “The Wiz,” original cast album (1975)
– “Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975),” Eagles (1976)
– “Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha,” Gunter Schuller, arr. (1976)
– “Wanted: Live in Concert,” Richard Pryor (1978)
– “We Are Family” (single), Sister Sledge (1979)
– “Remain in Light,” Talking Heads (1980)
– “Straight Outta Compton,” N.W.A. (1988)
– “Rachmaninoff’s Vespers (All-Night Vigil),” Robert Shaw Festival Singers (1990)
– “Signatures,” Renée Fleming (1997)