Thanks to reader Richard who e-mails that he’s been reading a book called A New Literary History of America
While he had started out as a lyricist, Berlin soon began composing music as well. He had taught himself to play on the Pelham Cafe piano, but he could only play in the key of F-sharp, which consists largely of black keys. Eventually he would purchase a transposing piano, which allowed him to play in a single key and then, with the flip of a lever, hear how a melody sounded in other keys.
Furia goes on to say that Berlin’s song Alexander’s Rag Time Band “redefined the nature of American popular songs.”
I searched around and found more by Philip Furia on Irving Berlin and black keys, like from this book
Although Irving Berlin loved the piano, he could barely play it. He had taught himself to play when he worked as a singing waiter in a Chinatown saloon, and, like many neophytes, he gravitated toward the black keys. Eventually he learned to play in the key of F#, an unusual key for composition and singing, but one that featured primarily the black keys on the piano. Like many Tin Pan Alley songwriters, Berlin purchased a “transposing” piano (he called it his “Buick”) so that, with a flick of a lever, he could continue to play in F# but would hear how a tune sounded in other keys.
Even though he could not read music, Berlin heard melodies as well as harmonies in his head. When he had worked out a song, he would play it for his musical secretary, who would then take it down in musical notation, and laboriously play chords for Berlin, who would listen until he heard the chord that matched the one in his musical imagination.
The black keys concept rang a Dylan bell with Richard, and with me too. Bob may well have talked about it more than once, but the major reference, I believe, is from an interview with Paul Zollo in Song Talk in 1991:
Zollo: Do you have favorite keys to work in?
Dylan: On the piano, my favorite keys are the black keys. And they sound better on guitar, too. Sometimes when a song’s in a flat key, say B flat, bring it to the guitar, you might want to put it in A. But… that’s an interesting thing you just said. It changes the reflection. Mainly in mine the songs sound different. They sound… when you take a black key song and put it on the guitar, which means you’re playing in A flat, not too many people like to play in those keys. To me it doesn’t matter.[Laughs] It doesn’t matter because my fingering is the same anyway. So there are songs that, even without the piano, which is the dominant sound if you’re playing in the black keys — why else would you play in that key except to have that dominant piano sound? — the songs that go into those keys right from the piano, they sound different. They sound deeper. Yeah. They sound deeper. Everything sounds deeper in those black keys. They’re not guitar keys, though. Guitar bands don’t usually like to play in those keys, which kind of gives me an idea, actually, of a couple of songs that could actually sound better in black keys.
Irving Berlin is the writer of such classics as Cheek To Cheek, God Bless America, Blue Skies, Puttin’ On the Ritz, White Christmas, Easter Parade, What’ll I Do?, Top Hat, White Tie and Tails and too many others to fit on the internet. Bob Dylan is the writer of such classics as Mr. Tambourine Man, Make You Feel My Love, Just Like a Woman, Blowin’ in the Wind, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Life Is Hard, I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, and Please Mrs. Henry.
Is there something to liking the black keys on a piano and being unable to read music that signifies genius on the part of a composer of popular song? Maybe. But it also may simply be that in their great and urgent hurry to get those songs out into the air, the likes of Berlin and Dylan simply don’t have the patience to learn how to do things properly. Make of it what you will, but let’s thank God for black keys and beautiful songs.
