SHINE
Created on 31/07/2005Latest update on 05/03/2026
Artist: Herb Wildofts Cinderella Roof Orch.
Author: Ford Dabney/Richard McPherson
Label: Brunswick
Year: 1923
B-side of Cinderella Blues. Introduced by Aida Overton Walker in black vaudeville show His Honor The Barber (1911) as That's Why They Call Me Shine. First published in 1910 with Gotham-Attucks, the first black-owned music publishing company. Owner Richard McPherson (alias Cecil Mack) mostly wrote for black vaudeville stars like Bert Williams and George Walker (Aida's husband). He also added words to James P. Johnson's The Charleston (see there).
Covers:
- 1924:
California Ramblers [top 10 US]
- 1924:
Billy Jones [on Regal]
- 1924:
Vernons [in England, where blackfaced minstrelsy ruled in vaudeville]
- 1924:
- 1924:
Bert & John Firman [idem]
- 1929:
Dallas String Band [with Coley Jones]
- 1932:
Bing Crosby & The Mills Brothers [top 10 US]
- 1932:
Louis Armstrong [top 20 US]
- 1936:
- 1936:
- 1938:
- 1942:
Dooley Wilson [in film Casablanca]
- 1947:
Frankie Laine [top 10 US]
- 1961:
- 1978:
- 1979:
- 1981:
- 2002:
Lyrics inspired by an actual person, Kid Shine, a friend of George Walker and a victim of a New York City race riot in 1900. It also refers to shiny black faces in Black & White Minstrel Shows. At the end of the coon song era, when blacks no longer could be ridiculed in song since they became so crucial in the orchestras, the spoken intro was dropped. Ry Cooder picked that up again, to smear it in anyone's face.
