Coming to the studio this morning and the song, It Ain’t Necessarily So, runs incessantly in my head for some unknown reason, reminding me of a post from a few years back that speaks directly to this. Here it is:
Sometimes when I am walking over to the studio in the morning I will have a song stuck in my head. Sometimes it is one that I recently heard, something from the radio. But sometimes it’s one that just springs deeply from the past, something I haven’t thought of in some time. That’s how it was this morning. And thinking of that song linked me to a small painting that I did many years ago.
They just fit together in my mind for some reason.
The song was It Ain’t Necessarily So, the song sung by the slick drug dealing Sporting Life in the great George and Ira Gershwin opera, Porgy and Bess, set among the Gullah population living on the sea islands off of Charleston, South Carolina.
Just a fantastic mix of sound and wordplay.
For some unknown reason, when I hear this song this small painting from over 20 years ago always comes to mind. It’s a piece that I did very quickly, not really knowing what I was trying to paint. It just sort of popped out and I immediately began calling it Moses (I Supposes). There was something about this piece that I have always liked. Maybe it’s the I-don’t-give-a-damn way way everything in it is painted, from the giant hands down to the giant feet.
It’s just a personal favorite that somehow always springs to mind when I think of this song. Maybe because Moses is mentioned in a verse in the song–
‘Til Ole’ Pharaoh’s daughter
She fished him, she says from dat stream.
Redtree Times 