Nature Boy by Unknown

The man who is sitting on top of the popular music world is shown above, cooling his ascetic frame in the California canyon he calls home. He is Eden Ahbez, a bearded, barefoot student of yoga who has performed the most unlikely of all musical feats-writing America's No. 1 hit tune on his first attempt. In the four weeks since it was first broadcast, his Nature Boy has become inescapable on jukeboxes and radios. Equally inescapable is the fact that Ahbez, who has lived most of his 35 years from hand to mouth, will net $20,000 in royalties.

Born in Brooklyn of parentage as mysterious as his name (both of which he refuses to discuss), Ahbez walked across the U.S. eight times before settling in California's great outdoors with wife, sleeping bag, juice squeezer and bicycle. Success, how-ever, may soon change Ahbez' life. Bothered by reporters and publicity agents, he is thinking of replacing his bike with a jeep to flee back to nature.

Stopped by a policeman once, Ahbez explained calmly, "I look crazy, but I'm not.  And the funny thing is that other don't look crazy, but they are." The cop thought it over. "You know, bud, you're right," he said.  "If anyone ever gives you any trouble, just let me know."

Bizarre as he is, Ahbez was equally unorthodox in the way he marketed Nature Boy.  He simply walked into a theatre where syrup-voiced Nat ("King") Cole was appearing.  Cole would not see him, so he handed the manuscript to the doorman and vanished.  A few frantic weeks later, Cole managed to find Ahbez, quickly made the song's first—and best—recording before the Petrillo ban.  Some of its words:

There was a boy, a very strange, enchanted boy,
They say he wondered very far … over land and sea …
This he said to me:
The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return.

Ahbez, who signs his name in small letters because he says God alone is entitled to capitals, first saw his present wife, Anna Jacobson, in a cafeteria, followed her to a street car and frightened her by presenting her with a slip of paper bearing his name and address.  Fortunately for Ahbez, Miss Jacobson was also both a mystic and a vegetarian.  She got in touch with him, and they were married.  The day he proposed he found $262.67 in a rubbish heap.  Since his windfall in Tin Pan Alley, Ahbez now is bothered with money worries.  "It's not so much what you want," Ahbez says, as he stares into the unaccustomed face of success.  "It's keeping away from the things you don't want."