The Very Best of Dinah Shore replaces RCA's previous and now-deleted collection Love and Kisses, Dinah with a substantially different track listing. The latter compiled an odd assortment of mostly non-hits while
The Very Best of Dinah Shore collects 14 Top Ten hits from the early and mid-'40s.
Shore moved to Columbia in 1946 before returning to RCA in 1950, racking up hits all the while, but nothing from her later RCA period is included. With one exclusion, the recordings are the top 14 hits from the time frame that is covered, including her most famous recordings from the era: "Blues in the Night" and "I'll Walk Alone."
Shore was one of the most popular singers of her day, though, and, for every song here, there are one or two other major hits that were omitted. To its credit,
The Very Best of Dinah Shore is readily available and reasonably priced with new liner notes by
Colin Escott, but Taragon's superior anthology The Essential RCA Recordings offers nearly twice as much material for only a few dollars more. ~ Greg Adams