Best remembered for her sensuous recordings of ‘Blues in the Night’ and the possessor of what one critic has called ‘a silky, light-as-air voice’, Shore was one of the most popular recording stars of the forties. While at Vanderbilt University, Shore sang on Nashville radio and took the name Dinah after using ‘Dinah’ the song as her signature tune. In 1937 she travelled to New York and sang on radio before joining  Xavier Cugat as guest vocalist. She made her recording debut with Cugat (‘The Breeze and I’, 1940) but her big break came later that year when she became a regular on Eddie Cantor’s radio show.

   Her first hit was ‘Yes My Darling Daughter’ (1940), which was an adaptation of a traditional Russian melody. The song that established Shore was Harold Arlen’s and Johnny Mercer’s film theme, ‘Blues In the Night’. That led to her appearing in several movies, including ‘Up in Arms’, in which she sang Arlen’s ‘Now I Know’ and ‘I’ll Walk Alone’ and the Jerome Kern biopic ‘Till the Clouds Roll By’, in which she sang the oft-recorded ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’.
   When her film career ended Shore returned to radio and joined Columbia. Her hits of the forties included ‘The Gypsy’, Al Jolson’s ‘Anniversary Song’, the Oscar winning ‘Buttons and Bows’ (1948) from the Bob Hope film, ‘Paleface’, and Sammy Fain’s ‘Dear Hearts and Gentle People’. In the fifties, as her hits declined with the advent of rock’n’roll, Shore established herself as a television star with a long-running show, in the mould of Perry Como’s. In the sixties she recorded only intermittently and in the seventies became a television chat-show hostess.