Dinette and Dinah - are these the same song?

Jazzaferri

The technical term is Dineete is a contrefact of Dinah

Buco

The pun is cute, I had always thought it was just another woman's name "Dinette". But when I was living in Paris I was told that this word actually means a pretend dinner that children might make with their dolls, like when you set the table with fake little plates and stuff .. it's called a "dinette"

It could be that Django read Dinah phonetically and saw it as dinner, hence his title for Dinette.

wim

Buco

I had my veggies at Dinette's many a times.

pdg

Maybe it's already been observed, but in Dinette (assuming the key of Ab), the fourth measure is the modern-sounding Bm7, I think. If Dinette were in the key of G, this would be a Bbm7. In contrast, in Dinah I think the (second half of the) fourth measure is Bbdim7.

wim

Huh, I go to an E7 there (E9 actually)- a similar change like in Stompin' at Decca. Next time I play Dinette I'll try on an Bm7 for size and see if I like it!

For Dinah I always thought of first 4 bars as just straight G. You may put a Bbdim7 in bar 4 but it's just a passing chord (G/B, Bbdim7, Am7) thing there, not something I'd actually write into a chart or play every time.