Eden Ahbez: The Original Nature Boy

The forgotten songwriter who lived under the Hollywood sign

A good decade ago, I discovered a recording on YouTube that made my armhair stand up and my eyes swell with tears.

The song was “Nature Boy” – a well-known jazz standard, first recorded by Nat King Cole in 1948 and covered by dozens of artists over the following decades, from Frank Sinatra to Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan to Tony Bennett, George Benson to D…