National Recording Registry

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 exhibition recordings (Group of three cylinders): "Around the World on the Phonograph" "The Pattison Waltz" "Fifth Regiment March"	Thomas Edison	1888–1889
Passamaquoddy Indians field recordings	Recorded by Jesse Walter Fewkes	1890
"Stars and Stripes Forever"	Military Band	1897
Metropolitan Opera cylinder recordings (the Mapleson Cylinders)	Lionel Mapleson and the Metropolitan Opera	1900–1903
Ragtime compositions piano rolls	Scott Joplin	1900s
1895 Atlanta Exposition speech	Booker T. Washington	1906 recreation	copy
"Casey at the Bat"	DeWolf Hopper	1906
"Vesti la giubba" from Pagliacci	Enrico Caruso	1907
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"	Fisk Jubilee Singers	1909
Lovey's Trinidad String Band	Lovey's Trinidad String Band	1912
"Tiger Rag"	Original Dixieland Jazz Band	1918
"Arkansas Traveler" and "Sallie Gooden"	Eck Robertson	1922
"Downhearted Blues"	Bessie Smith	1923
Rhapsody in Blue	George Gershwin, piano; Paul Whiteman Orchestra	1924
Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings	Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven	1925–1928
Victor Talking Machine Company sessions in Bristol, Tennessee	Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Ernest Stoneman, and others	1927
Highlander Center Field Recordings Collection	Rosa Parks, Esau Jenkins and others	1930s–1980s
Bell Laboratories experimental stereo recordings	Philadelphia Orchestra; Leopold Stokowski, conductor	1931–1932
"Fireside Chats" radio broadcasts	Franklin D. Roosevelt	1933–1944	original
Harvard Vocarium record series	T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and others	1933–1956
"New Music Quarterly" recordings series	Henry Cowell, producer	1934–1949
Description of the crash of the Hindenburg	Herbert Morrison	May 6, 1937	original
The Cradle Will Rock (Marc Blitzstein)	Original cast	1938
"Who's on First?"	Abbott and Costello	October 6, 1938
The War of the Worlds	Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre on the Air	October 30, 1938	copy
"God Bless America"	Kate Smith	November 11, 1938
The John and Ruby Lomax Southern States Recording Trip	John and Ruby Lomax	1939
"Strange Fruit"	Billie Holiday	1939
Grand Ole Opry	Uncle Dave Macon, Roy Acuff, and others	October 14, 1939
Béla Bartók and Joseph Szigeti in Concert at the Library of Congress	Béla Bartók, piano; Joseph Szigeti, violin	1940
The Rite of Spring	Igor Stravinsky conducting the New York Philharmonic	1940
Blanton-Webster era recordings	Duke Ellington Orchestra	1940–1942
"White Christmas"	Bing Crosby	1942
"This Land is Your Land"	Woody Guthrie	1944
D-Day radio address to the Allied Nations	Dwight D. Eisenhower	June 6, 1944	original
"Ko Ko"	Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and others	1945
"Blue Moon of Kentucky"	Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys	1947
"How High the Moon"	Les Paul and Mary Ford	1951
Songs for Young Lovers	Frank Sinatra	1954
Sun Records sessions	Elvis Presley	1954–1955
Dance Mania	Tito Puente	1958
Kind of Blue	Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, and others	1959
"What'd I Say", Parts 1 and 2	Ray Charles	1959
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan	Bob Dylan	1963
"I Have a Dream" speech	Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.	August 28, 1963	copy
"Respect"	Aretha Franklin	1967
Philomel: For Soprano	Bethany Beardslee, recorded soprano, and synthesized sound	1971
Precious Lord: New Recordings of the Great Gospel Songs of Thomas A. Dorsey	Thomas A. Dorsey, Marion Williams, and others	1973
Crescent City Living Legends Collection		1973–1990
"The Message"	Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five	1982