The great pianist Overton Berry performed with bassist Jeff Davies on Art Zone this week. Their first song, “Eleven is Forever,” has a great backstory that we didn’t have time to talk about on the show, so I’m sharing it here as told by Keith Terhune, musician and producer, and Overton. Enjoy!
Upon completing the recording of Overton’s most recent CD, Terhune said, “I then noticed that the total recording time was 56:11 minutes. Cool, that adds up to eleven-eleven. Then we realized it was Jan. 11, 2009, at eleven minutes after eleven o’clock.”
Overton tells the story about the CD’s title song.
“While working at the Sans Souci Restaurant in Tokyo, Japan, in the late 1980s, one of the regular customers requested me to extemporaneously compose a song to depict musically a scenario that he proceeded to describe: ‘Overton, you’re a twelve-year-old boy and you want to tell your father that you love him.’
“Upon subsequent visits, he would present me with various scenarios and ask me to compose songs describing them. On his last visit, he brought his wife with him and told me that that day was their 11th wedding anniversary. He then asked me to compose a song for the occasion. Thus the song “Eleven is Forever” was born. It was inspired by the phrase ‘I love you.’”
Watch Overton and bassist Davies perform “Eleven is Forever” at A-1 Pianos on Art Zone.
