The Black Keys Fan Lounge

Akron, Ohio, Artist Alfred McMoore has died aged 59. Most people have never heard of him. Those who have (like me) only know of him because of The Black Keys.

Those who have read interviews with the band have invariably seen answers to questions about where the band’s name comes from. Dan and Pat have usually explained ‘black keys’ was a description used by a “schizophrenic Akron artist”. It was something they identified with.

In a heartfelt article about Mr McMoore’s passing, Pat’s dad, Jim Carney evoked the Black Keys band connection:

Mr. McMoore traveled around town on the bus or on his bike and loved to call people on the telephone. Often, there would be 20, 40 or more messages from him on our home phone.

”This is Alfred McMoore,” he would say into the machine. ”Your black key is taking too long.”

The term ”black key” was something he used often.

When my son, Patrick, and Chuck Auerbach’s son, Dan Auerbach, formed a band in 2001, they thought of Mr. McMoore and came up with the name the Black Keys.

When the two later formed a publishing company for their music, they called it McMoore McLesst Publishing, a tribute to a term he often used to describe himself.

Dan and Pat normally just passed over the story of the band’s name and Mr McMoore. Perhaps they were just tired of telling the story in interviews, perhaps out of respect for Mr McMoore’s privacy. Probably the most descriptive and full explanation of Dan and Pat’s affinity with Mr McMoore came in this interview from 2006:

“Alfred McMoore was a retarded schizophrenic,” the soft-spoken Auerbach says from his home. “He lived in a group home and would generally wear at least four three-piece suits, all at the same time, one on top of the other, layered. My dad, who was a folk-art dealer, would try to help him out, to keep him in art supplies and things, so he was around the house a lot when I was growing up.”

McMoore also spent time with the Carney family; initial contact was made when Patrick’s dad did a story on him for a local paper. The drummer remembers McMoore phoning the Carney home constantly in 2001, right around the time he and Auerbach were trying to decide on a name for their band.

“Alfred McMoore has this weird sort of Tourette’s thing going on where he calls people he doesn’t like D Flats and Black Keys,” Carney relates. “I believe that these are things that he despises the sound of — D flats or any black key. It’s funny because, although I don’t know musical scales, I don’t think there’s a D flat [editor's note: there is]. Anyhow, Alfred McMoore had been calling my dad every single day when I was talking to Dan about band names. I said, ‘Hey, what about the Black Keys?’ — and he instantly knew exactly what the fuck I was talking about, because Alfred McMoore called his dad’s house all the time too.”

Both Carney and Auerbach describe McMoore as nothing less than a genius. (For a further sign of their affection and respect, consider that the Black Keys publish their songs under the name of McMoore McLesst Music.) McMoore, who’s still alive and living in Akron, typically worked in pencil and crayon, producing stream-of-consciousness sketches on giant, four-foot-by-sixty-foot rolls of paper.

“You’d have things like funeral trains where Jesus would be playing an electric guitar that was plugged into a Christmas tree,” Auerbach remembers. “That’s the kind of shit that I was raised on — that’s high art to me, which kind of explains my idea about things like guitar playing. It was amazing to watch him do his artwork, because it was something that he taught himself to do. He had his own style and he was completely obsessive about it.”

The rest of the interview is well worth a read. It really lays out Dan and Pat’s own artistic creed. You can see in Dan’s final comment above how the influence of McMoore is personified in his own approach to his music.

Even though most people only know of Mr McMoore through The Black Keys, it seems fitting that fans should mark his passing since he used to attend other people’s funerals – just one of his many quirks appreciated by the Auerbach-Carney families.

RIP, Alfred McMoore.

Related posts:

1. The Black Keys Alfred McMoore Memorial Endowment Fund
2. Interview: Artist Todd V Talks About The Film “Outside In: The Life and Art of Alfred McMoore”
3. The Black Keys unlock fans’ generosity
4. The Black Keys’ Record Store Day Bonus 7 Inch Vinyl Release
5. 2009: The Black Keys Year In Review

Tags: alfred mcmoore, the black keys