"Nature Boy" is a song first recorded by American jazz singer Nat King Cole. The song was written in 1947 by eden ahbez and is partly autobiographical.
The Brooklyn-born musician who wrote Nat King Cole’s 1948 hit “Nature Boy” certainly embodied its title. By the time he composed this soft, mystic song, he was living in woods and parks around Los Angeles, playing piano in a raw food restaurant. He had also changed his name to eden ahbez, insisting on a lower case-only spelling on the grounds that “only God and Infinity deserve capitals”.

The song mixes autobiography with spiritual convictions. The “strange, enchanted boy” of the opening stanza is surely ahbez, and its climax — “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return” — is a moral imperative.