[CNN] Sonic Youth, Beethoven make Library of Congress list

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/11/preserving.sounds.ap/index.html


Tuesday, April 11, 2006; Posted: 10:38 p.m. EDT (02:38 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A high school band plays Beethoven. President Calvin Coolidge delivers his inaugural address. Fats Domino turns "Blueberry Hill," a hit for big-band leader Glenn Miller, into a rock 'n' roll classic.

They're among the 50 records that the Library of Congress has deemed worthy of preservation this year.

"The National Recording Registry represents a stunning array of the diversity, humanity and creativity found in our sound heritage, nothing less than a flood of noise and sound pulsating into the American bloodstream," Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said in announcing the choices for 2006. (View the entire list)

The library took the occasion to announce a rare find: a 1940 jam session featuring tenor saxophonist Lester Young, The night club couldn't be positively identified, said Gene DeAnna, head of the library's recorded sound section, but it may have been the Village Vanguard in downtown Manhattan.

"It wasn't Carnegie Hall," DeAnna said at a news conference. "At one point you can hear the MC announcing, 'The chili con carne is ready, if anyone wants to order it."'

Loren Schoenberg, executive director of the Jazz Museum in Harlem, compared it to finding a Shakespeare sonnet or a short story by Ernest Hemingway.

The library also announced that it had recently received 186 test pressings of records made in the late 1950s or early 1960s, among them 25 songs by bluesman Robert Johnson. The pressings, donated by blues collector Tom Jacobsen, were used to make the first Johnson reissue anthology, "King of the Delta Blues," which influenced the Rolling Stones and other groups.

The Modesto, California, High School band did well in competitions of the 1920s and 1930s. Few high school bands were recorded until the late 1940s, making the Modesto school's 1930 version of Beethoven's "Egmont Overture" a rarity.

Coolidge, known as a man of few words, spoke for 47 minutes in the first broadcast inaugural address. A circuit of 21 radio stations was put together for the event in 1925.

Domino recorded his relaxed version of "Blueberry Hill," adding Creole cadences, in Los Angeles in 1956. He was inspired by a Louis Armstrong version of the song, which Miller had taken to No. 1 in 1940.

Other rock classics being inducted include Jerry Lee Lewis' "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day," both from 1957; the Jimi Hendrix Experience's "Are You Experienced?" from 1967; and Sonic Youth's landmark noise-rock album "Daydream Nation," from 1988.

Other sounds to be preserved include a radio broadcast by Clem McCarthy of Joe Louis' first-round knockout of Max Schmeling in 1938. The audience was estimated at 70 million. "The symbolism of an African-American defeating a citizen of the political state that proclaimed the superiority of the white race was lost on no one," the library commented.

Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" was performed the same year by the NBC Symphony, led by Arturo Toscanini. The library noted that the work has been called the "American anthem for sadness and grief."

Every year since 2000, the library has registered recordings "that are culturally, historically or aesthetically important and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." Last year it unveiled newly discovered tapes of Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane from 1957, a discovery that yielded one of the top-selling jazz CDs of 2005.



The List:

The Library of Congress' 2006 selections for the National Recording Registry, in chronological order:


"Canzone del Porter" from "Martha (von Flotow)," Edouard de Reszke, 1903

"Listen to the Lambs," Hampton Quartette; recorded by Natalie Curtis Burlin, 1917

"Over There," Nora Bayes, 1917

"Crazy Blues," Mamie Smith, 1920

"My Man" and "Second Hand Rose," Fanny Brice, 1921

"Ory's Creole Trombone," Kid Ory, June 1922

Inauguration of Calvin Coolidge, March 4, 1925

"Tanec pid werbamy/Dance Under the Willows," Pawlo Huemiuk, 1926

"Singin' the Blues," Frankie Trumbauer and his Orchestra with Bix Beiderbecke, 1927

First official trans-Atlantic telephone conversation, Jan. 7, 1927

"El Manisero" ("The Peanut Vendor"), Rita Montaner, vocal with orchestra, 1927; "El Manisero," Don Azpiazu and his orchestra, 1930

Light's Golden Jubilee Celebration, Oct. 21, 1929

Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Op. 84, Modesto, California, High School band, 1930

"Show Boat," Helen Morgan, Paul Robeson, James Melton and others; Victor Young, conductor; Louis Alter, piano, 1932

"Wabash Cannonball," Roy Acuff, 1936

"One O'clock Jump," Count Basie and his Orchestra, 1937

Archibald MacLeish's "Fall of the City," Orson Welles, narrator, Burgess Meredith, Paul Stewart, April 11, 1937

"The Adventures of Robin Hood" radio broadcast of May 11, 1938

Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fight, Clem McCarthy, announcer, June 22, 1938

"John the Revelator," Golden Gate Quartet, 1938

"Adagio for Strings," Arturo Toscanini, conductor; NBC Symphony, 1938

"Command Performance" show No. 21, Bob Hope, master of ceremonies, July 7, 1942

"Straighten Up and Fly Right," Nat "King" Cole, 1943

Allen's Alley segment from "The Fred Allen Show", radio broadcast of Oct. 7, 1945

"Jole Blon," Harry Choates, 1946

"Tubby the Tuba," Paul Tripp (words) and George Kleinsinger (music), 1946

"Move on up a Little Higher," Mahalia Jackson, 1948

"Anthology of American Folk Music," edited by Harry Smith, 1952

"Schooner Bradley," performed by Pat Bonner, 1952-60

"Damnation of Faust," Boston Symphony Orchestra with the Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Choral Society, 1954

"Blueberry Hill," Fats Domino, 1956

"Variations for Orchestra," Louisville Orchestra, 1956

"Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," Jerry Lee Lewis, 1957

"That'll Be the Day," Buddy Holly, 1957

"Poeme Electronique," Edgard Varese, 1958

"Time Out," The Dave Brubeck Quartet, 1959

Studs Terkel interview with James Baldwin, Sept. 29, 1962

William Faulkner address at West Point Military Academy, 1962

"Dancing in the Street," Martha and the Vandellas, 1964

"Live at the Regal," B.B. King, 1965

"Are You Experienced?" Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1967

"We're Only in It for the Money," Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, 1968

"Switched-On Bach," Wendy Carlos, 1968

"Oh Happy Day," Edwin Hawkins Singers, 1969

"Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers," Firesign Theatre, 1970

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," Gil Scott-Heron, 1970

"Will the Circle Be Unbroken," Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, 1972

The old foghorn, Kewaunee, Wisconsin, recorded by James A. Lipsky, 1972

"Songs in the Key of Life," Stevie Wonder, 1976

"Daydream Nation," Sonic Youth, 1988