Newbie green screener: background keyed out without selecting key color

Newbie here: I’ve been through several green screen tuts, think I understand it, but am not getting the results shown in the tuts. Version 2.82.7. I have gone into compositing, opened the source file in the movie clip node, added the composite node, and viewer node. All works as expected. I see the source image in the background. As soon as I add the matte keying node, the background image looses its background, as if I had selected the background color…though I didn’t. Without making any entries into the keying node, the background disappears. I’ve set up a virgin model, and without any changes to the model, and the background disappears the instant I add the keying node. Any idea why this is happening? Thanks for any help.