Shine, originally titled That’s Why They Call Me Shine, is a Tin Pan Alley song with lyrics by Cecil Mack and Lew Brown and music by Ford Dabney. It was published in 1910 by Gotham-Attucks Music Publishing and was first performed by Aida Overton Walker in the 1909 show His Honor the Barber. The piece is said to commemorate a man named Shine who was with George Walker during a 1900 race riot in New York. The song became a standard of early jazz and ragtime and has been recorded by many artists, starting with the California Ramblers in 1924, then Louis Armstrong in 1931, Bing Crosby with the Mills Brothers in 1932, Ella Fitzgerald in 1936, Benny Goodman and Harry James, and Frankie Laine in 1947. It has appeared in films such as A Rhapsody in Black and Blue (1931) and Casablanca (1942). A notable later revival is Ry Cooder’s 1978 version on the album Jazz, which includes the original extended introduction that comments on the song’s vaudeville origins.
