Golden Age of Radio adventure-drama “Gang Busters” is one of several radio programs to make the just-announced 2008 list of additions to the National Recording Registry.
Joining “Gang Busters,” an FBI-approved crime serial that ran for over two decades from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s on several radio networks, were NBC Radio’s coverage of singer Marian Anderson’s recital at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, and a 1943 recording of an interview with writer Zora Neale Hurston by NBC Radio’s Mary Margaret McBride.
Other selections included several record albums and songs familiar to radio listeners: “West Side Story — Original Cast Recording” (1957); The Who, “The Who Sings My Generation” (1966); Etta James, “At Last” (1961); Link Wray, “Rumble” (1958); George Jones, “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (1980); the Andrews Sisters, “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” (1938); Carmen Miranda, “Que é Que a Bahiana Tem?” (1939); King’s College Choir, “A Festival of Lessons and Carols as Sung on Christmas Eve in King’s College Chapel” (1954); the Stanley Brothers, “Rank Stranger” (1960) and Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, “2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks” (1961).
Other recordings making the 25-recording list included the last known recording of the possibly extinct Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, a reading by poet Dylan Thomas and a recording of Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech from Fulton, Mo. (officially known as the “Sinews of Peace”).
The National Recording Registry is a collection of recordings at the Library of Congress that are considered of national cultural importance. Each year 25 more recordings are added. This is the seventh annual addition. There are 275 recordings in the collection.
