Thanks, Roger, for making this request. Since you reminded me of this song, I have worked it up to play on my piano.

This song moves stepwise a lot and doesn't lend itself to continued strumming in an accompaniment. It's best to play a chord, then let it die away if the dissonance gets to be too much.

Hence "the infamous p chord." When we get together and play, the p chord (short, of course, for "piano", which means soft in Italian) means that the guitarist should lay off for a while. Some guitarists seem to think it unthinkable, but it can be done.

Here's how I play "Black is the color."


Dm                p       C         Dm
Black is the color of my true love's hair.

                        Gm
His eyes are some-thing won-drous fair.

p    Dm    Gm or C   p       Gm          Dm
The pur-est lips      and the gen-tl-est hands.

                      Gm
I love the ground on where he stands.

   Dm            p    C Am   Dm
I love my love and well he   knows.

          Gm                                       
If he on earth no more I'd see,

   Dm                  Gm
my life would quick-ly fade a-way.

Dm                  p      Dm          C    Am    Dm
Black, black, black is the color of my true love's hair.

1. You should be warned that arguing over this song is nearly a cottage industry on the Internet.

2. If you don't like these chords, you can download a tilt-a-whirl that converts them. Would somebody kindly post a link to a site that provides one of those?