Eden Ahbez

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Eden Ahbez (actually: Alexander Aberle; born April 15, 1908 in Brooklyn , New York , † March 4, 1995 in Los Angeles ) was an American composer .

Life

Ahbez was the composer of one of the most unusual so-called " one-hit wonders " of American pop music in the mid-20th century. He is still known today for his song Nature Boy , which the jazz pianist and singer Nat King Cole recorded in 1947. With the interpretation of this song, Cole's world success as a singer in the border area between jazz and pop began.

Born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, Ahbez claimed to have grown up in an orphanage and to have crossed the United States on foot eight times by the age of 35. His “alternative” lifestyle was far more unconventional than that of most beatniks and hipsters of his time and can best be described with a later term as that of a dropout . With his wife Anna Jacobson he lived without permanent shelter; the couple camped mostly in Griffith Park in downtown Los Angeles or under the first "L" of the Hollywood Sign . Ahbez claimed that as a vegetarian he could get by on an amount of three dollars a week, he gave lectures on street corners on oriental mysticism and dabbled as a poet of beat poetry and as a musician . He wanted to have his name written exclusively in lower case letters , for which he gave the reason that capitals should be reserved for "the divine"; he asked friends and relatives to call him ahbe .

Gunther Schuller describes his appearance as that of a "long-bearded, barefoot, Christ-like hermit" (" a long-bearded, barefoot, Christ-like hermit "). With a dirty, rolled-up piece of paper containing his sketches for Nature Boy , Ahbez turned to Nat King Cole's manager Mort Ruby and insisted that Cole watch the song. Cole probably recognized the resemblance of Ahbez 'composition to the Yiddish song Schweig mein Hertz , but that suited him because he was interested in adding a Yiddish or Yiddish-sounding piece to his repertoire.

The resounding success of Cole's recording also gave Ahbez some attention in the mass media . When asked, he stated that the very strange enchanted boy portrayed in the lyrics was his friend Robert “Gypsy Boots” Bootzin, like Ahbez himself an early hippie and pioneer of yoga and natural food in the USA.

Becoming aware of the surprise success of Nature Boy , the rights holders of Schweig mein Hertz embroiled both Ahbez and Cole in lengthy legal disputes, which were finally settled in an out-of-court settlement . It was only when Nat King Cole's widow transferred her share of the rights to Ahbez after her husband's death in 1965 that Ahbez had significant income from his only hit.

In the mid-1950s, Ahbez made occasional appearances as a musician, composer and singer of jazz (with Herb Jeffries ) and early rock 'n' roll . In 1960 an LP was released under his own name with the title Eden's Island , whose idiosyncratic mix of beat poetry with exotic sounds was generally perceived by contemporaries as "bizarre". For Nat King Cole, he wrote another title, Land Of Love , which could in no way tie in with the success of Nature Boy . In addition, Ahbez, meanwhile also the father of a son, continued his ascetic way of life without any noteworthy changes.

Some photographs showing Ahbez with Brian Wilson in the studio are occasionally cited to support the thesis that the Beach Boys were significantly influenced by Ahbez '"exotic" conception of music in their work on the project album Pet Sounds (1966). Another recording under his own name, Echoes From Nature Boy , is stylistically linked to Ahbez 'first LP, but was only released posthumously.

Eden Ahbez died in 1995 as a result of a traffic accident. Nature Boy is now an integral part of the jazz standard repertoire and has been played and sung by many important artists (including personalities as diverse as John Coltrane , Frank Sinatra , Sun Ra , George Benson , Celine Dion and Kurt Elling ).

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