There are many different versions of this song, starting with the title—from Black is the Color, Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair, But Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair, Black Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair, and even Black Black Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair. (2). There are versions from both the male and female perspective.

  The basic plot of the song is the singers’ desire and longing for their love. The ‘“True Love” has, as the title alludes to, black hair. Their eyes, face hands, and even the ground under their feet is adored. The singer longs for the time when they can be as one.

  Recent singers include everyone from Christy Moore on her 2008 album to Nina Simone. There is even a downloadable ring tone.

  1) Roud Folksong Index. 2013. 25 September, 2013. . English Folk Dance and Song Society.

  2) Roud Folksong Index. 2013. 25 September, 2013. . English Folk Dance and Song Society.

  JOHN WAYNE’S DREAM

  By

  Gary A. Braunbeck

  “Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.”

  — Oscar Wilde

  “It (music) expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to remain silent.”

  — Victor Hugo

  Man, it’s bad tonight—sick, miserable, choke-on-this ugly—the worst it’s ever been, worse even than when you were drying out in the hospital, and you need tonight’s meeting before you decide to break the goddamn seal on the bottle stashed in the trunk of your car with those Other Things, Things you can’t help but think of in upper case, that’s how bad it is; it’s so bad you can’t bring yourself to name them, even silently to yourself, that would mean you’re actually, seriously, no-shit-Sherlock considering the repellant thoughts and ugly pictures that are kicking so hard across your mind, these things you know damned well ought to turn your stomach but don’t, not even a little (they’ve caused you to actually smile when you’re alone and once even chuckle into your cold coffee), and if you decide to do it, the Things will make it so easy, easy, easy-peezy, so you have to think of those Things in upper case because to name them, to admit you have them because of the thoughts and pictures in your mind, that’s what scares you right down to the marrow of the bones in this sad-ass body you’ve been walking around in for—what?—fifty-three years and however many months and days, this sad-ass body that at least had enough willpower to drag itself down here to the church basement and the all-too familiar door halfway down the hall, the one you’re standing in front of right now; so you take a deep breath, close your eyes, force the thoughts and pictures to the back of your mind, hoping they’ll stay there, God grant me the serenity to make it all fuck off, and as you grasp the doorknob and begin turning it, you see the piece of paper that’s been hastily taped to the frosted glass—

  AA Meeting Canceled

  Tonight Only:

  Ghosts Sing Sad Cowboy Song for the Whole Broken World — and you feel your jaw actually drop like the anvil-mouth of some cartoon character as you read the words a second time, hand still gripping the doorknob, but before you can react, you hear it start from inside the room: that song … and on a guitar, of course—a steel-faced dobro-style resonator, from the sound of it, just slightly out of tune, causing the melody to sound all the more distant and empty and hopeless; gritting your teeth, you pull your hand away from the doorknob and step back as if moving two feet away will stop the sound from reaching you, but reach you it does, just as loud, just as cheerless, no goddamned different from any of the hundreds of times you’ve heard it played or played it yourself by request, by request, by request only because that’s the only way anyone in their right mind would play the song, sure as hell not by choice, nosiree, like King Lear always said never, never, Never, Never, NEVER.

  “Are you going in?” says a voice to your left.

  She’s younger than most of the people you’ve seen at the meetings; her face is round, its skin slightly pink beneath the surface, no tell-tale loopy blue lines of broken veins in her nose, no too-bright sheen in her eyes, no crow’s feet, nothing to indicate that she shares your disease—hell, she looks like someone who should be playing the Julie Andrews part in The Sound of Music, not a recovering drunk.

  “The, uh … the meeting’s been canceled,” you say, not so much pointing at as absent-mindedly flipping a finger toward the makeshift sign.

  “I know,” she replies. “I’m here for the ghosts’ concert. Isn’t that why you’re here, ___________?”

  She calls you by name. You have never seen this woman before. She’s so fresh, so genuinely pretty, so clean—no, it’s more than being clean, she seems … absolutely unspoiled. You might have a small graveyard of brain cells relegated to the backplate of your grey matter, but you’re not so far gone that you’d forget a face like hers.

  She smiles and brushes past you, reaching down and turning the doorknob. She’s pressed against your side, her hand almost touching yours, but doesn’t seem the least bit shy or embarrassed by it.

  “I always loved this song,” Unspoiled says. “It’s been one of my favorites for … oh, I don’t remember how long.”

  You just stare at her, not knowing a courteous way to respond. C, F, G, A-minor and D-minor; the whole goddamn song’s based on various combinations and repetitions of those five chords—hell, the intro alone looks and feels like the most goddamn boring tune ever written—

  / C - - / G - - / Am - - / G - - /

  / C - - / F - - / C - - / G - - /

  / C - - / G - - / Am - - / G - - /

  / C - - / F - - / G - - / C - - / - - - /

  —Snoozeville, right? Yet somehow those five basic, dreary, mind-numbing chords—chords you could teach a genetically-retarded monkey to play—manage to give body, soul, shame, and voice to the pain of the saddest songs ever … and wouldn’t you know, it was Dad’s favorite?

  Of course you know that, you know damn near everything about good old Dad; you know too goddamned much about good old Dad—Christ knows he talked enough during those last few days, lying there in his bed with a bedpan under his ass and a catheter running up into his urethra, trickling bloody urine into a plastic bag. Sometimes he’d give you a half-hearted smile, but he wasn’t the same man, the one who used to berate, humiliate, and mock you, the man who could always find fault in everything you did, who knew just the right thing to say to make your accomplishments seem inconsequential in everyone’s eyes including your own, who could diminish you with less effort than it took to pick his nose; no, this wasn’t the same man at all. This was just a sick old bastard making a last-ditch effort to get his bad-tempered ass into heaven.

  “Have you heard this song before?” asks Unspoiled, staring at you with a curious intensity that, goddammit, reminds you of good old Dad toward the end.

  You’d take him to the county cemetery where his parents and sister were buried, and as he sat there in his wheelchair staring at their headstones, you’d study his face and see him wondering if there was something that he’d missed, something he could’ve done to spend a little more time with them, to save them from feeling alone and frightened during their last few days of life, maybe even wishing that one or all of them could still be here to comfort him and, for a little while, get his mind off the disease that now counted down the clock that told of the time he had left. You don’t know, maybe he came here to study their graves the same way he’d study his own face in a mirror, naked and defenseless. Why won’t you look at me and Mom that way, you’d wonder. We have some time left—not much, but some—and maybe we could repair some things—okay, okay, okay, be realistic—if not repair, then at least spackle over some of the cracks so that when we drop the bag of meat that used to be you into the dirt, we might feel some kind of loss instead of relief. Is that too much to ask at this point?

  “Did you know,” says Unspoiled, “that this song has actually been around for centuries, in dozens—maybe even hundreds—of variations?”

  You nod your head. “Actually, yeah … I did know that.” Because good old Dad, he’d told you about that dozens—maybe even hundreds—of times … when he wasn’t a zombie.

  He’d sit for long hours in front of his bedroom window, staring out at the same neighborhood he’d known for most of his life, searching for something hidden, something unnoticed until now, something that would reveal whatever secrets there were to be revealed. Close by, Mom and you waited for him to complete this final voyage into himself, hoping the old emotional wounds might at last heal so that he would maybe, maybe, maybe, please God just once turn and smile over his shoulder, telling the two of you, without the burden of words, that he’d returned from this last nightmare, this final batch of self-recriminations that had made him a sadistic stranger to you for too long; and now, now that he was returned to you for however brief a time, you would go outside into the warm spring light, your mother and you each holding one of his hands, and you would thank the day for its blessings as it fell into twilight, and you would remain there, in shadows, as before, hands joined. “I don’t even feel sick,” was among some of the last things he said, along with, “What I wouldn’t give for a hamburger and cold beer right about now.” And of all Final Requests, he asked you to get out your old guitar and play that fucking song for him because, he said, it helped him to relax, to breathe easier, to fall asleep the way a man ought to fall asleep—no drugs, no siree, just a good, hard-working man falling asleep because the good, hard work took it out of him today. He would say that the Duke, the Duke never took to pills or liquor to fall asleep in his movies. The Duke was a Man, a Man’s Man, and boy, wouldn’t it be nice to just once have the kind of dream that the Duke must’ve had when his head hit the pillow at night, the kind of dream only a strong, solid, all-American Man’s Man dreamed? “Maybe I’ll have it tonight,” he said to you that last night as you strummed those five horrible chords on that shabby guitar you’d bought second-hand from a pawn shop when you were twelve. “Maybe tonight I’ll dream John Wayne’s dream.”

  Part of you wanted to smash that guitar to pieces right there and then, go all Pete Townshend on the thing and scream “Don’t you remember his last movie, Dad? The Duke, your Man’s Man, was a goddamn walking corpse, being eaten away bit by bit from the bottom of his bowels by the same thing that’s gobbling up your guts—fuck! He spent most of that movie fractured on Laudanum. That’s how he went to sleep, but you don’t remember that, do you? No—all you remember is that Jimmy Stewart told the Duke it was not the way he’d choose to go out, and that the Duke, your Man’s Man, the great All-American Cowboy, he took Stewart’s advice and went out in a blaze of glory, guns blasting away and bad guys dropping all around, blood and bodies littering the saloon floor, and you sure as hell aren’t going out that way, are you, Dad?”

  No, he sure as hell didn’t. But that doesn’t have to mean you’ll go out the same way, his son who was such a private embarrassment to him; his son who never walked into the sunset with his best girl at his side; his son who never counted off twenty paces with a cheating gambler in the street before whirling around and putting the scoundrel down with a quick, single, justified shot; his son who never rode high in the saddle or talked real slow and deliberate or strolled with the swagger of a Real Man who made decisions and stuck with them out there where the tumbleweeds blew across silent, dusty streets where the womenfolk and children could walk in safety once again, knowing it was Real Man who’d done what needed doing.

  “Hey, Dad, look at those bad guys fall. Look what I decided to do. Am I a Man in your eyes now? Am I worthy to sleep the sleep of the Just, of the Heroic? Am I worthy to dream John Wayne’s dream?”

  Unspoiled leans her head to the side a little and says your name again. “Are you all right?”

  “I was hoping for, you know, the other meeting that was supposed to—”

  She grabs your hand as she pushes the door open. “Oh, this will be much better than one of those dreary meetings. Those meetings are for everyone.” She pulls you into the room. “This, tonight, is just for unfortunate rakes—just one, actually. This is just for you.”

  You stare at her, hoping her crazy won’t explode and get all over you. “Imagine what that means to me.” What the hell is that supposed to mean? You have no idea, but it’s too late to take it back.

  She laughs and pulls you into the room. It’s mostly dark except for one bright circle of light shining down onto the middle of the floor; in the center of the circle is a folding chair. She leads you there, pushes you down, and kisses the top of your head.

  “Now don’t you move. We went through an awful lot of trouble to put this show together.”

  Before you say anything, she’s gone—snap!—into the shadows. You stand up and walk back to the door, but it isn’t there any longer. Okay, okay, okay—maybe you just lost your bearings. That has to be it. You’re just a little confused because of Things in your trunk and the unbroken seal on the bottle and the thoughts and pictures in your head, that has to be it, you’re just … Shit—you’re probably just losing it, finally, just like everyone said you would someday. You stick out your arms and start feeling around the walls, doing your best Helen Keller to find the door because it has to be here someplace, but after a minute or two, you find nothing and you’re even more confused than you were before you stood up, so you go back to the chair and you just sit because you don’t know what else to do.

  The sound of an old-fashioned projector clatters to life somewhere behind you, and your gaze follows the beam of light to the far wall where someone—Unspoiled, maybe?—has pulled down a screen, and you watch as a grainy black-and-white home movie comes into focus and shows you a scene that you know damn well took place dozens of times in your youth but could not possibly have been filmed because your family never had the money to afford a home-movie camera:

  You see a variation of yourself—so much younger but only a little stronger than the man he eventually became; he’s standing in the corner of a room, head down, studying his feet as if expecting some great revelation to come thundering up from the earth’s core and show him a Great Truth that will set his spirit free.

  Sitting a few feet away in his favorite chair, good old Dad is pointing at the young man who would have to settle for becoming you; he’s got a beer in his hand and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

  A conversation repeated so many times and with so few variations it has surpassed the realm of mantra and become the refrain of the inharmonious tune that has been and is your life:

  “A man makes a decision and he sticks with it, boy.”

  “Yessir.”

  “A man does what he says he’ll do. No more, no less.”

  “Yessir.”

  “How old are you now?”

  Christ, you really didn’t remember, did you? You think now “Twenty-three, sir.”

  “Twenty-three, and what have you got to show for it?”

  A decent enough music career—playing clubs, upscale restaurants, sometimes getting enough put aside for some studio time, a couple of self-produced albums selling okay for digital download on some minor music sites. Friends. A place of my own. “I think I’ve got a lot to show for it.”

  “You ain’t famous, now, are you? I mean, what’s the point of doing what you do if all you’re gonna settle for is being small-time? A big fish in a little pond?”

  “I like my life.”

  “You’re weak, boy. A real man, when he makes a decision to do something, he does it. Your problem is you never decided to be anything more than second-rate because you ain’t got the guts to be a real man and decide to be something more.”

  Why didn’t you just say you were ashamed of me? I could’ve worked with that. “I thought you’d be pleased that I make a decent living at something I love to do.”

  “Don’t talk to me about doing something you love. Doing something you love don’t get you shit in the long run. It just makes you weak, makes you a fella who’s happy to settle for something. Hell, the Duke never settled in any of his movies. I thought you’d learn something from you and me watching all his movies when you was a kid. The Duke’s movies, they taught good lessons. Taught you how to be a man.”

  Still looking down at the floor, waiting for revelations to thunder. “Because when he made a decision he always stuck with it.”

  “Goddamn right he stuck with it. Duke always went out a winner, a hero, a man you could respect. Because he knew, the Duke did. A real man, he makes a decision and sticks with it.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Does what he says he’ll do, no more, no less.”

  “Yessir.”

  The film finishes, the light goes out, and the projector shuts off. Deep down in your bowels, you feel the need churning. Leave. Open the bottle. Do it. Take the Things and just do it. Don’t go out like good old dad. Don’t go out like the Duke. Christ, it hurts! If someone had jammed a knife-blade entwined with barbed-wire into your stomach and twisted it, it wouldn’t hurt as much as this need.

  “Goddammit,” you whisper to yourself. “I want a drink. I want a drink. Just one. One drink. That’s all.”

  The unseen guitar begins playing again, the same five chords, and each chord snarls into your head and your balls like a diamond-tipped drill. You want to get up and get the hell out of the room—and if you can’t find the door, you’ll beat a goddamn hole into the wall with your bare fists (“Just like the Duke would do,” comes the echo of a voice that sounds like your own), you’ll kick and claw and chew your way out if you have to, you’ll—

  —Unspolied appears as the screen is raised up. She’s sitting on a stage several feet off the floor. Her body is all wrapped up in a white sheet of some kind, its material thicker than something made from cotton; it looks almost like a tarp. Only her face and one hand are visible.