There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy. His name was eden ahbez, he was a hippie decades before that was a common thing to be, and he wrote “Nature Boy“, which Nat King Cole turned into a major hit. The tune has become a jazz and pop standard, and has been recorded uncountably many times. I used Ableton Live to make a mix of my favorite versions, along with some related music:
Samples in order of appearance:
- Sharon Cash – “Nature Boy” (1970)
- eden ahbez – “Nature Boy” (1947)
- Antonín Dvořák – Quintet in A Major, Op. 81, B. 155: II. Dumka: Andante con Moto (1887) performed by the Smetana Quartet & Josef Hala
- Mobb Deep – “Whole Lotta Thug” (instrumental) (2012)
- Nat King Cole – “Nature Boy” (1947)
- George Benson – “Nature Boy” (1977)
- Baby ft. Clipse – “What Happened To That Boy” (2002)
- Ella Fitzgerald & Joe Pass – “Nature Boy” (1976)
- The Singers Unlimited – “Nature Boy” (1998)
- Fat Boys – “Human Beatbox” (1984)
- Flying Lotus – “Massage Situation” (2007)
- The John Coltrane Quartet – “Nature Boy” (1965)
- Mos Def and Talib Kweli – “B Boys Will B Boys” (1998)
- Jon Hassell – “Nature Boy” (1999)
- Caetano Veloso – “Nature Boy” (2004)
- Central Line – “Nature Boy” (Original 12 inch version) (1983)
- David Bowie & Massive Attack – “Nature Boy” (2001)
The Mobb Deep beat, produced by The Alchemist, samples Sharon Cash. The Flying Lotus track samples The Singers Unlimited. The Fat Boys, Baby and Mos Def/Talib Kweli tracks are unrelated except through coincidences of naming.
“Nature Boy” is an oddity among jazz standards. It sounds more like an Eastern European folk tune than an American pop song. The phrase lengths are vague and there is no particular groove, so every performer and arranger either has to play rubato or figure out how to lay out the phrases in the meter. As a result, every version sounds wildly different.
Herman Yablakoff noticed some similarity between “Nature Boy” and his Yiddish theater song “Shvayg Mayn Harts”. eden ahbez denied having heard Yablokoff’s song, and they eventually settled out of court. ahbez’s father was Jewish and he spent time growing up in Jewish neighborhoods, so it’s conceivable that he heard the song and forgot it. It’s also possible that both ahbez and Yablakoff got their descending minor triad motifs from on Dvořák’s “Dumka”. To my mind, the likeliest explanation is that ahbez, Yablakoff and Dvořák were all drawing on the same Eastern European folk tradition, and arrived at the minor triad motif independently.
There are several versions of “Nature Boy” that didn’t make it into my megamix, but that I still find interesting. I used John Coltrane’s recording from The John Coltrane Quartet Plays in the megamix. There’s another recording that surfaced more recently on Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album. It’s not as far out, but it’s still quite intense. There’s no piano. Jimmy Garrison plays a simple repeated pedal tone loop on bass, as he did on so many of Coltrane’s trance-like modal tunes. The thing is, “Nature Boy” isn’t modal, so as Coltrane plays the changes on top of this unchanging pedal, they sometimes clash excitingly. Elvin Jones’ drumming is particularly excellent.
Miles Davis recorded the tune on Blue Moods, his second album as a leader. Elvin Jones plays on this one too, along with Charles Mingus on bass, Teddy Charles on vibes, and longtime Ellington sideman Britt Woodman on trombone. That is a very promising lineup, but the recording doesn’t quite come together for me.
Speaking of Teddy Charles, his Tentet arrangement has a nice cigarette-smoking film noir vibe.
I know that there are very famous versions by Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn, and Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett, but to my ears, Nat King Cole is really the last word in smooth orchestral arrangements. I do want to give a shoutout to the James Brown version, which pairs the Godfather of Soul with an operatic soprano for an absolutely unhinged result.
Leonard Nimoy recorded a spoken word version, which is… what it is.
There’s also a whole world of mildly sleazy bossa nova arrangements, of which Eartha Kitt’s is probably the best one. However, it isn’t on YouTube for some reason. Etta James’ bossa version is cool too.
It’s fun to reflect on the fact that this whole chain of musical events was kicked off by the unlikely intersection of a suave, dapper Black jazz singer and a bearded hippie living under the letter L in the Hollywood sign. The Lawyers Guns Money blog captions this image, “Nat King Cole in a tuxedo chats with a cult leader during rehearsal.”
This photo reminds me a lot of my inner life, actually. No wonder I like the song so much.