Redtree Times

eden ahbez with Cowboy Jack Patton, circa 1949

There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy
And sad of eye
But very wise was he
And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoken of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in returm
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return

—Nature Boy, eden ahbez

Sometimes when you look behind something that’s been in front of you for years you find out things you would have never imagined otherwise. Such was the case with the song, Nature Boy. From the lyrics above, it seems like such a simple song but there is much more to it beneath the surface–as it often is with many simple things.

Nature Boy, as recorded by the great Nat King Cole, has long been one of my favorite songs. It has a wonderful haunting melody and tells the story of a “strange enchanted boy” and his search to find love. It had a sort of mystical feel to me when I first heard it as kid in the 60’s. It still does. That feel made the song an oddity in the world of popular music in 1948 when Nat King Cole recorded it and had a huge hit with it, staying at #1 on the charts for eight weeks.

I was going to just have a short post and put up a YouTube video of Cole’s version but in doing so I saw the name of the songwriter, eden ahbez, and was intrigued, perhaps by the lack of capitalization in his name. Doing a little research, I came across some photos of him such as the one at the top, from the late 40’s sitting with Cowboy Jack Patton (who wrote the song Ghost Riders in the Sky) and a spaniel of some sort. I’ll let you figure out who is who in the photo. The long hair and attire of ahbez seemed really out of place for me in thinking of 1948 so I read on.

eden ahbez was a real one-of-a-kind character in the world of music and in general. You could probably guess that from the name which he adopted and wrote only in lower case letters. He adopted the name later in life and said that he chose to use only lower case letters for his name because only the words God and Infinity deserved  capitalization.

Born in Brooklyn in 1908, he was orphaned and was placed as a child on one of the Orphan Trains of that era, a program that took orphans from the crowded eastern cities to foster homes in the Midwest. He ended up in Kansas and was raised there, later becoming a pianist and band leader in Kansas City before heading to the Los Angeles area n 1941. It was there that he became involved with the health food movement of that time and let his hair grow.

He is regarded as the first hippie by many, a long-haired and bearded wanderer who crisscrossed the country on foot, wearing robes and sandals, maintained a vegetarian lifestyle and slept out under the stars. In fact, when Nature Boy hit the charts he and his wife were living under the first L on the Hollywood sign, which stoked a bit of a media frenzy around ahbez. He worked in and frequented a vegetarian restaurant (that’s where he met Cowboy Jack Patton, another interesting character) in 1940’s Los Angeles whose German owners preached the gospel of natural and raw foods. Their followers became known as the Nature Boys.

Not really what I was expecting from a pop songwriter in 1940’s LA. ahbez died in 1995 from injuries sustained in an auto accident. He was 87. His was a truly unique life, just waiting for a biographer to tell the story, and reading the little I discovered makes me find the song even more interesting. Hope you’ll do the same now that you know a bit more about eden ahbez…

I first posted the article above back in 2009. I’ve ran it a couple of times since, adding versions of Nature Boy from a variety of artists. I came across a version I hadn’t heard before and thought it might be worth sharing along with eden ahbez’s original take on the song. The newer version is from the Swedish a cappella group, The Real Group.

It’s a lovely version of a lovely and elegantly simple song–and a fine way to start the day.