"Dinah" is a popular

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

 song

Song

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...

. The music was written by Harry Akst

Harry Akst

Harry Akst was an American songwriter, who started out his career as a pianist in vaudeville accompanying singers such as Nora Bayes, Frank Fay and Al Jolson.-Life and career:Akst was born in New York, United States....

, and the lyrics by Sam M. Lewis

Sam M. Lewis

Sam M. Lewis was a Jewish-American singer and lyricist, born in New York City, New York as Samuel Levine-Biography:...

 and Joe Young. It was introduced by Eddie Cantor

Eddie Cantor

Eddie Cantor was an American "illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor and songwriter...

 in Kid Boots

Kid Boots

Kid Boots is a musical with a book by William Anthony McGuire and Otto Harbach, music by Harry Tierney, and lyrics by Joseph McCarthy. The show was staged by Edward Royce....

(1923) in Pittsburgh. The song was published in 1925.

It was immensely popular with jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 bands and vocalists of the period and beyond, with versions by Chet Baker

Chet Baker

Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...

, Fats Waller

Fats Waller

Fats Waller , born Thomas Wright Waller, was a jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer...

, Ethel Waters

Ethel Waters

Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Birmingham Bertha",...

, Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby

Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....

 with The Mills Brothers, The Boswell Sisters, Joséphine Baker

Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker was an American dancer, singer, and actress who found fame in her adopted homeland of France. She was given such nicknames as the "Bronze Venus", the "Black Pearl", and the "Créole Goddess"....

, Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

, Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...

, Cab Calloway

Cab Calloway

Cabell "Cab" Calloway III was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City where he was a regular performer....

, Benny Goodman

Benny Goodman

Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...

, The Temperance Seven

The Temperance Seven

The Temperance Seven is a British band specializing in 1920s-style jazz music.- Career :The Temperance Seven were founded at Christmas 1955, although it has been alleged they first "saw the light" in the Pasadena Cocoa Rooms, Balls Pond Road, North London, in 1904...

, The Revelers

The Revelers

The Revelers were an American quintet popular in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Revelers' recordings of "Dinah", "Old Man River", "Valencia", "Baby Face", "Blue Room", "The Birth of the Blues", "When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba", and many more, became popular in the United States and...

, Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...

 and even Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...

.

A 1966 cover by The Chambers Brothers

The Chambers Brothers

The Chambers Brothers is a soul-music group, best known for its 1968 hit record, the 11-minute long song "Time Has Come Today". The group was part of the wave of new music that integrated American blues and gospel traditions with modern psychedelic and rock elements, spawning a heady mix...

 was released as a single, and later as a bonus track on the CD reissue of The Time Has Come.

Japanese versions

In Japan, it was released by Teichiku Records

Teichiku Records

Teichiku Records is a Japanese record label, run by the Teichiku Entertainment company, that specialises in enka, kayōkyoku, and similar music. Teichiku is an abbreviation for , the former name of the company...

; it was Dick Mine(ディック・ミネ)'s debut song in December, 1934.

Tokuichi Mine had previously been an unknown band singer. He referred to himself as Dick Mine, translated the lyrics of "Dinah" into Japanese by himself, and sang the song. He called himself Kōich Mine , a pen name, as the translator. "Dinah", sung by Dick Mine, became the first hit song for Teichiku Records, with "Dark Eyes

Dark Eyes (song)

Dark Eyes is a Russian song.The lyrics of the song were written by a Ukrainian poet and writer Yevhen Hrebinka. The first publication of the poem was in Literaturnaya gazeta on 17 January 1843....

" on the flip side.

"Dinah" was also covered by, among others, Tadaharu Nakano  as "Dinah", Akira Kishii  as "Dinah", Kenichi Enomoto

Kenichi Enomoto

Kenichi Enomoto was a popular Japanese singing comedian, mostly known by his stage name Enoken ....

  as , meaning "Enoken's Dinah", Isao Hayashi

Isao Hayashi

was a Japanese popular music and military music singer and composer. He took part in the Japan's famous year-end show Kōhaku Uta Gassen 11 times. One of well-known songs composed by him is the military song , which propaganda vehicles of uyoku dantai have aired in Japan.Hayashi was born in...

  as "Dinah", and Yoshio Kawada ( as .