Ford Thompson Dabney (15 March 1883 – 6 June 1958) was an American ragtime pianist, composer, songwriter, and acclaimed director of bands and orchestras for Broadway musical theater, revues, vaudeville, and early recordings.

Additionally, for two years in Washington, from 1910 to 1912, he was proprietor of a theater that featured vaudeville, musical revues, and silent film.

Dabney is best known as composer and lyricist of the 1910 song "That's Why They Call Me Shine,"[1] which for eleven point five decades, through 2024, has endured as a jazz standard.

Dabney and Europe's early days in New York apparently overlapped because, reportedly, they often met at the Marshall Hotel in Midtown's Tenderloin District, at 127–129 West 53rd Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues – one of two avant-garde hotels for creative, intellectual black New Yorkers.

That same neighborhood, one block south – 52nd Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues – contained, from the late 1930s until the early 1960s, a remarkable concentration of jazz night clubs.

[B] In the first week of January 1904, he sailed to Haiti to fill a four-month post as pianist to the president, Pierre Nord Alexis (1820–1910), for $4,000 (equivalent to $135,644 in 2023).

Effie King was the stage name of Anna Green (maiden; 1888–1944), who in 1907, married actor Frank Henry Wilson (1885–1956).

Dabney began working with James Reese Europe at the Clef Club in the 1910s, and together collaborated with Florenz Ziegfeld on his shows in New York City (including at the New Amsterdam Theater from 1913 to 1921).

In August 1917, during their first session, they recorded 5 songs for Aeolian Vocalion, including "At the Darkdown Strutter's Ball," which featured vocalist Arthur Fields.

After the start of World War I, Vernon Castle – Dabney and Europe's employer – was determined to fight for England.

Europe rapidly rose with great acclaim as director the 369 Regiment Band and returned to New York in 1919 as a war hero.

During an intermission, he berated a snare drummer, Herbert B. Wright (born 1895), who became enraged and lunged at him, striking his neck with a pen knife in what seemed initially to be a minor nick.

As a side note, when Wright was released on March 30, 1927, he, with his wife Lillie, went on to live in Roxbury, Boston, at 23 Haskins Street, working as an elevator operator, a danceband drummer, and a private drum teacher.

[Genealogy 1] After losing his job in 1921 at the New Amsterdam Theatre, Dabney continued working in New York, composing for three more decades.

Dabney operated an entertainment bureau, and for many years, performed engagements in West Palm Beach and Newport.

[U] WifeDabney married – on March 14, 1912, in Washington – Martha D. Gans, widow of boxer Joe Gans who had owned the Goldfield Hotel in Baltimore at the corner of East Lexington and Colvin Streets, just east of downtown, in the Pleasant View Gardens neighborhood.

Joe Gans – according to boxing historian and Ring Magazine founder Nat Fleischer – was the greatest lightweight boxer of all-time.

[V] Uncle: Wendell Phillips DabneyDabney's uncle, Wendell Phillips Dabney (1965–1952), who is chronicled as having been one of his music teachers, became founding president of Cincinnati chapter of the NAACP, author, and newspaper editor and publisher of the Ohio Enterprise, later named The Union, both late of Cincinnati.

Prof. Dabney, in 1895, contacted Dvořák, who was director the National Conservatory of Music of America, an institution in New York that, like Oberlin, accepted African Americans.

At Dvořák's home, Prof. Dabney, among other things, introduced one of his own compositions, a plantation melody, "Uncle Remus.

"[W] Great uncle: John Marshall DabneyOne of Dabney's great uncles, John Marshall Dabney (1824–1900), was honored in November 2015 in Richmond, Virginia, at the Quirk Hotel, as a caterer and bartender – known as the world's greatest mint julep maker.

Jennifer's mother (great-granddaughter-in-law of John Marshall Dabney), Mary Hinkson (1925–2014), was an internationally celebrated modern dancer.

His legacy was the subject of the a 23-minute documentary released in 2017, The Hail-Storm: John Dabney in Virginia, by Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren.

[41] Alexander "Buck" Spottswood, as manager, and J. Milton Dabney as team captain, reorganized, in 1895, the Manhattan Baseball Club of Richmond, Virginia.

Dabney also played for the Original Cuban Giants of St. Augustine, Florida, and Trenton, New Jersey – the first professional African-American baseball team.