Thanks for the Ma Rainey song. Her voice transcends the primitive recording methods of her day.
I really DON’T like those email Urban legends, especially the religious one. As if the Gospel isn’t enough to touch and change lives, people have to make up stupid stories which are easily disproved by a little research.
By when I call people on it, they think I am being cranky. (sigh)
Frances Rose Shore (1916-94) was a Jewish girl from Tennessee. As a small child she loved to sing, encouraged by her mother. Her father would often take her to his store where she would perform impromptu songs for the customers.
At 14, Dinah debuted as a torch singer at a Nashville night club – only to find her parents sitting ringside, having been tipped off to their daughter's performance ahead of time. Whoops! They allowed her to finish, but put her professional career on hold.
When Dinah was 16, her mother died unexpectedly of a heart attack, and she decided to pursue her education. She went to Vanderbilt and graduated in 1938 with a degree in sociology.
She decided to return to pursuing her career in singing, so she went to New York to audition. In many auditions, she sang the popular song "Dinah". When disc jockey Martin Block could not remember her name, he called her the "Dinah girl," and soon after the name stuck, becoming her stage name. She eventually was hired as a vocalist at WNEW where she sang with a skinny kid from Jersey named Frank Sinatra.
In March 1939, Dinah made her national radio debut on the Sunday afternoon CBS radio program, “Ben Bernie's Orchestra”. In February 1940, she became a featured vocalist on NBC’s “Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street”, a showcase for Dixieland and blues songs. With Dinah on board, the show became so popular that it was moved from 4:30 Sunday afternoon to 9 PM Monday night in September. In her prime-time debut, she was introduced as "Mademoiselle Dinah 'Diva' Shore, who starts a fire by rubbing two notes together."
Dinah's singing came to the attention of Eddie Cantor, who signed her as a regular on his radio show, “Time to Smile”, in 1940. Dinah credited him for teaching her self-confidence, comic timing and the ways of connecting with an audience. Cantor bought the rights to an adapted Ukrainian folk song with new lyrics by Jack Lawrence for Dinah to record. This became her first hit.
Being a docent at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, I know about urban legends. The library’s grounds include the house where he was born in 1913. It was built on that spot the previous year, but every time I conduct tours of the house, someone always asks me where it was originally built. The story that it was moved there from someplace else stubbornly refuses to die.