[HN Gopher] Eden Abhez: The strangest hit songwriter
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Eden Abhez: The strangest hit songwriter
Author : tintinnabula
Score : 221 points
Date : 2024-06-12 20:13 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.honest-broker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.honest-broker.com)
| mkl wrote:
| Fascinating. I only knew this song as one of the centrepieces of
| Baz Luhrmann's _Moulin Rouge!_ , but this article doesn't even
| mention that.
| MBCook wrote:
| Same. I didn't recognize the name but the instant I read those
| first two lines I heard the Moulin Rouge version in my head.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| It's also a recurring theme in the soundtrack of The Talented
| Mr. Ripley.
| msephton wrote:
| Love this. I don't remember hearing the song before, so it was a
| double treat!
| dang wrote:
| I read an article about Ahbez last year - it went into his early
| history in (I think) the 1930s around the health food movement,
| and also about the legal troubles that an attempt to make a
| documentary about him got into. But now I can't find the article.
| I seem to recall that his friends had lots of unreleased
| recordings but weren't allowed to put them out because whoever
| ended up with the rights to his estate was being unreasonable.
|
| https://pleasekillme.com/nature-boy-eden-ahbez/ looks good but it
| wasn't that one.
|
| I was surprised by how much he and others anticipated the hippies
| already in the 1930s. https://lyrakilston.com/2015/03/05/the-
| remarkable-nature-boy... has a lot of that backround.
| lstamour wrote:
| I'm not sure either about the legal trouble, but I'd also
| recommend https://www.iowasource.com/2020/12/02/eden-ahbez/ for
| some anecdotes.
| Loughla wrote:
| Wow. That those men were shockingly ahead of their time.
| bsder wrote:
| If you want something interesting, listen to Ahbez sing "Nature
| Boy" and then listen to Cole sing it.
|
| Since Ahbez sings a cappella, he sings "untempered" notes in the
| correct key while Cole is singing "tempered" ones to match the
| piano accompaniment--and it changes the feel of the song.
| labster wrote:
| I have no idea why people are downvoting you. Are they assuming
| "untempered" is an insult (it's not, it's called just
| intonation), or is the parent post wrong?
| bsder wrote:
| Don't worry about up/down votes.
|
| I've had very strange things with a large number of downvotes
| on a comment and then a very large number of upvotes one or
| two layers downthread.
|
| Presumably there are some bots/brigades that are trying to
| create a "good history" to try and pretend they are
| "organic". The bots/brigades don't care about anything more
| than the first layer.
| oidar wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=339UrDjHDio
| msephton wrote:
| Interesting, this video mentions a Yiddish song "Shvayg, mayn
| harts" ("Hush, my heart") that it seems to have been inspired
| by. And on a video of that song https://youtu.be/uT7GcjBnWaw
| is this info
|
| > ("Shvayg mayn harts") was in the 1935 Yiddish theater show
| Papirosn. Years later eden ahbez paid Yablokoff $25,000 out
| of court to settle a plagiarism complaint. Listen to the
| chorus and see if you think it was stolen. Some say they were
| both stolen from Antonin Dvorak's 1887 "Piano Quintet No. 2"
| - which may have been stolen from Czechoslovakian folk music.
|
| Here's a Dvorak comparison
| https://m.facebook.com/MastersonHomeConcerts/videos/dumka-
| an...
|
| Also noteworthy is the fact that eden ahbez preferred to
| spell his name as all lowercase.
|
| All of this and more at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_Boy including the
| original poster of this HN item.
| pier25 wrote:
| Are you sure he's singing untempered?
|
| Sounds more like vernacular singing without precise tuning.
| twic wrote:
| Saw the photo and assumed it was Norman Greenbaum.
|
| In case anyone else is interested in the "unbaked bread, and
| unfired pies", here is a recipe book:
|
| https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.4683/page/111/mode/2up
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I like how these kinds of articles hit front page on HN, quite
| refreshing
| rrherr wrote:
| There's only one other jazz standard I know of with comparable
| lyrics:
|
| "Lush Life" by Billy Strayhorn.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lush_Life_(jazz_song)
|
| Listen to Johnny Hartman singing in this recording with John
| Coltrane: https://youtu.be/sNIn1_RLkmc
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Excellent article. I'd love to watch a documentary on him
| mpalmer wrote:
| One of his songs was featured in the first season of Fargo, which
| has throughout its run distinguished itself with its off-kilter
| needle drops.
|
| I had no idea he wrote Nature Boy!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sMqgetHxww
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| Surprised to see this name at the top of this website. Obscure in
| the moment perhaps but ultimately legendary. Eden's Island is
| fantastic exotica, perhaps the most iconic. There's even a
| documentary in the works.
| Nition wrote:
| One thing about this song that the article doesn't really go into
| is that the chords are just insane, really unusual, and yet it
| works perfectly - it sounds very different to your average song
| but it doesn't sound wrong or off-key.
| msephton wrote:
| There's much this articles doesn't mention, such as the hugely
| popular modern representation of the song in the movie Moulin
| Rouge, and the songs origin in a Yiddish song and even as far
| back as Dvorak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_Boy
| Pine_Mushroom wrote:
| Just to be contrarian: 'Alone Together' and 'You and the Night
| and the Music' by Dietz and Schwartz, as well as 'Yesterdays'
| by Jerome Kern, feature similar harmony, just to name a few
| popular jazz standards. I'm looking at an original sheet of
| 'Nature Boy' now and see 1 diminished chord, a couple #5's and
| a couple b9's: not that unusual really, certainly not in jazz.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| The chord progression is rather conventional for this style of
| music, especially for the late 1940s. Listen to some songs by
| Cole Porter, Duke Ellington or Vernon Duke from the 1930s.
| fathyb wrote:
| Agreed. For spicier chords also recorded by the Nat King Cole
| Trio on the same set check out Mona Lisa:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIDX18Xl16s
| Sparkyte wrote:
| Didn't know him but listening to his biggest hit you grow an
| appreciation for how the lyrics string together which is not
| something you'd hear from not musical person like myself.
| exogen wrote:
| His song Full Moon is one of my favorites, it completely
| transports you to a place.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| TIL that "Nature Boy" is quoted in the Num Num Cat Tiktok
| collaboration.
|
| (0:53 to 1:26)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C1FZ4HtzGY
| sbeaks wrote:
| I think this version is my favourite (kurt elling):
| https://youtu.be/s8WxZfAV3Bc
| buovjaga wrote:
| > Frankly, I consider him the first hippie, an advocate for a
| lifestyle that didn't even exist when he rose to fame.
|
| Hippie-like movements have always popped up as an escape from
| authoritarian rule and oppression. Raoul Vaneigem frames this
| well in his book The Movement of the Free Spirit, about medieval
| and Renaissance heretical movements:
| https://monoskop.org/log/?p=7986
|
| "He sees not only resistance to the power of state and church but
| also the immensely creative invention of new forms of love,
| sexuality, community, and exchange."
| rwmj wrote:
| The 1930s in Britain were a great time for Utopian communities.
| Jonathan Meades did a documentary about them:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wujXeI6rj6U (review:
| https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-
| radio/2013/feb/02/wonders...)
| rubidium wrote:
| Glad to see Ted Gioia's work here. He writing over the last year
| has been helpful in getting new understanding for me.
|
| His posts on technology are sane and levelheaded without being
| Luddite.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| I highly recommend Ted Gioias jazz history books. "West Coast
| Jazz" is fantastic.
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