The story behind “Nature Boy” is as unique as its composer.
In May 1947, Nat King Cole had just performed to a capacity crowd at the Lincoln Theater in Los Angeles, when a strange man came to the stage door. He had long, flowing hair, an unruly beard, and was wearing a toga-like outfit. He insisted that he needed to see Nat King Cole.
This unkempt man was Eden Ahbez, but he never got a chance to see Cole that day. Instead he only got as far as the singer’s valet, Otis Pollard—who sent the visitor packing. But before leaving, Ahbez thrust a tattered piece of music—the score for “Nature Boy”—into Pollard’s hands.
Pollard returned to Cole, and remarked: “The guy I talked to is a genius or a nut.”
Cole was intrigued and took the song. After humming through the melody, he was struck by its expressive quality. And the lyrics were even more surprising—they never even use the phrase “nature boy,” which is the song’s title. Instead they espouse a kind of metaphysics of natural living.
It starts out as a story song—probably about Ahbez himself. But it’s told in the third person. The lyrics begin:
There was a boy.
A very strange enchanted boy….
And the song ends, twenty bars later, by sharing cosmic advice with the listener:
The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved in return.
Okay, it’s unconventional, but this is one of my favorite songs. Back when I worked daily on songwriting, I aspired to merging music and a higher philosophy—and “Nature Boy” was a role model for me.
I’ve even recorded it, uncharacteristically insisting on performing both piano and vocal.
The words are simple enough, but critics have endlessly debated what they really mean. Are they Ahbez’s autobiography? Are they a lifestyle guide? Are they a spiritual invocation?
Novelist Steve Erickson tried to summarize the meaning of “Nature Boy,” and came up with this:
“All thousand and one Arabian Nights compressed into two and a half minutes as mediated by a cracked Mojave Debussy slugging down the last of the absinthe from his canteen.”
Cole didn’t know quite what to make of it, but he tried “Nature Boy” out in front of an audience at his next Hollywood gig—at the Bocage on Sunset Boulevard. From the start, Ahbez’s haunting song captured listeners’ attention.