"In late March 1948, the King Cole Trio released their second 78rpm single of the year...Nature Boy stayed at the top of the US pop charts for eight weeks in the spring of 1948, at a time of rapidly increasing tension: the start of the cold war and the anti-communist purge. For such a gentle, pacifistic song to have become the bestselling single of the year speaks to a sense of inchoate longing in the US at that time, barely three years after the second world war.
"After Nature Boy became a hit, in an appearance on the CBS show We the People, Cole finally met the man who had written his song, the year’s bestseller. In archive clips of the episode, eden ahbez (the lower case was preferred) has hair down to his shoulders and wears loose-fitting clothes; his style is nearly two decades ahead of his time. Reading from prepared scripts, these two outliers – a proto-hippy and an early African American crossover artist – tell the story of how Cole discovered the song, after it was delivered on spec to the Los Angeles theatre where he was performing. To the incredulity of the host, ahbez announces that he has 'not much use for money'. It’s no small irony that this devotee of simple living – albeit with an entrepreneurial side – is being presented on a talkshow on a major US network, produced by Life magazine and sponsored by Gulf Oil. As ahbez rides on to the stage on his bicycle and then assumes a yoga position, he makes it clear that he will not conform to the values of corporate America: in his sheer strangeness, he is a harbinger of things to come." - Jon Savage
Article: Mother Nature’s Son: The Exotic World of Songwriter eden ahbez
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