Nature Boy

One of the tracks on Joy Mover’s upcoming album is the classic “Nature Boy.”  Here’s a bit of background on the track along with a signature performance by Nat King Cole.

“Nature Boy” is a song by Eden Ahbez, published in 1947. The song tells a fantasy of a “strange enchanted boy… who wandered very far” only to learn that “the greatest thing… was just to love and be loved in return.” Nat King Cole‘s 1948 recording of the song was a major hit, and “Nature Boy” has since become a pop and jazz standard, with dozens of major artists interpreting the song.

Song Structure

The first two measures of the song’s melody parallel the melody of the second movement in Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A, Op. 81 (1887). Yiddish theater star/producer Herman Yablokoff, in Memoirs of the Yiddish Stage, claimed that the melody to “Nature Boy” was plagiarized from his song “Shvayg, Mayn Harts” (“Hush, My Heart”), written by Yablokoff for his play Papirosn (1935). Ahbez protested his innocence, claiming to have “heard the tune in the mist of the California mountains,” but later agreed to pay Yablokoff $25,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

The content of the song is based on a 1940s Los Angeles-based group called “Nature Boys,” of which Ahbez himself was a member.