Long-haired and vegetarian, with no interest in money, eden ahbez, the writer of Nat King Cole’s 1948 classic Nature Boy, is only now being recognised as the first of the hippies
In late March 1948, the King Cole Trio released their second 78rpm single of the year. Already well known for crossover pop smashes such as (I Love You) for Sentimental Reasons, the trio were taking a flyer on something different for their next release. Initially buried on a B-side, Nature Boy was unlike anything else that they – or anyone else – had recorded. Cole sings the dreamy opening lyrics – “There was a boy / A very strange, enchanted boy” – with warm intimacy; the song ends with an eternal message: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn / Is just to love and be loved in return.”
The sides flipped, 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.