Simcha it’s so good to see you again with your Naked Archeology”. My father was one of those Jewish pioneering physicians who faced invidious discrimination. He had been the Chief Resident in the University of Maryland Hospital and when he completed his residency, he joined the US Air force during the Korean War. When his time in the Air Force was completed he applied to the University of Maryland Hospital, where he had excelled and been the Chief Resident and was denied those all important privileges to treat his patients in his own alma maters hospital. He went to the Board of Directors of the hospital and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. He said if he wasn’t granted privileges he’d go to the press and tell them how a war veteran, Captain in the Air Force who graduated with honors and had been Chief Resident was being treated because of his religion. He got his privileges.
As a black american in NYC who grew up on Nat King Cole, Im so very greatful to know this information. That you for sharing your heritage and experience with us.
I knew about Eden Ahbez and his strange life but I did not know the other part of the story. 2 Ships with Romanian Jews sailed to the Black Sea trying to reach Palestine in those years. The Struma needed maintenance in Istanbul but the Turkish government did not allow, eventually a Russian submarine sunk it. Only one person survived. The Patria reached to the port Of Izmir and stayed there about 2 weeks. Passengers were not allowed to get on land and did not have enough food. At that time the Sephardi Jews of the city, the women cooked and the men delivered the food using rowboats, to the passengers. Eventually that ship made it to Palestine. Despite the British ban on these ships the Patria captain hit the boat to a beach at night and the passengers were saved.
I was born in 1960 and I grew up with the voice of Nat King Cole. I'm a professional musician, and in that sense...race doesn't matter. I grew up in Houston, and always loved his voice and interpretations. Race just didn't matter to me. Mr. Cole was fully one of the most amazing musicians ever.
I love learning new things. This topic was interesting to understand "Nature Boys". Makes total sense that a group of ideologies were forced to move west to "survive". I really love listening to history from Simcha.
When I first learned this song, I was surprised that it's in melodic minor and doesn't have any of the Tin Pan Alley / Jazz harmonies, I immediately thought that it's very Eastern European sounding. Plus a certain plaintive cadence, like the cantor in the synagogue. Very Jewish sounding without the typical Jewish scale (like Hava Nagila or "Seven Forty").
20+ years ago my late father was in palliative care, and Nat King Cole's music particularly Nature Boy gave him some peace. And that song you mention, Cigarettes? You mean Papirossen, dont you?
May the memory of Haim (Herman) Yablakov forever be a blessing! 🙏🕯Thank you Simcha for mentioning the name of Haim Yablokov and for teaching us that he wrote the melody of this song! ❤️ He deserves to be recognized.
Didn’t disappear . Spoken by hundreds of thousands of chassidim in monroe , Williamsburg, boro park , square town , Stamford Hill in London , Salford in Manchester UK. Whole communities in Israel . And the numbers are increasing as they take be fruitful and multiply very seriously.
Great video, great song, and thanks for posting, but here is something you may not know about it. When I lived in L.A. in the 1970’s, I knew a musician who had known songwriter Eden Ahbez in the 1940’s & 50’s. What is not generally known, is the impact that the Indian guru, Paramahansa Yogananda, had on Ahbez. This is the story as it was told to me 50 years ago by someone whom I strongly suspect had been one of the “Nature Boys” himself. Yogananda, who took up residence in California in the late 1930’s and lived there for the rest of his life, would often speak of a being he called “Babaji” or “The Deathless Guru”, who was presumably the founder of the particular school of yoga (called “Kriya”) to which Yogananda belonged. Members of the homeless, avant-garde, hippy group of “Nature Boys” would often attend Yogananda’s open talks and retreats in the mid-to-late 1940’s, and it is there that Eden learned of “Babaji” who was believed to be an immortal avatar who lived in the Himalayas, and was able to appear anywhere in the world, to anyone at any time, and who had the outer appearance of a young boy. Although Eden would never have openly claimed to have seen “Babaji”, he did tell some of his close friends that he had been “visited” by The Deathless Guru, and that this being was “the very strange enchanted boy” of the song, who “travelled very far, very far, over land and sea.” Yogananda wrote a chapter on Babaji in his book, Autobiography Of A Yogi.
Awesome!!!👏 Thanks!! The core of the melody is definitely there!! People generally don’t understand history’s threads n how, for example, the roots of the 1960s had roots even to the 1920s in Europe Why hasn’t anyone noticed that b4 or said anything?
A few years ago, there was a Great Performances program on PBS with Michael Tilson Thomas showcasing the music of his grandparents who were stars of the Yiddish Theater. Many tunes for famous broadway songs were borrowed from the Yiddish Theater.
Its a paradox that extreme barriers of oppression can foster beauty, but in today’s society we are so often ruined by the opposite, by permissiveness, by open doors.
If I had to pick a song by a Jewish songwriter as "the most important song of the 20th century," it would probably be "Like A Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan.
I always thought the song had Middle Eastern Semitic origins . Because of the patterning of the tune. Definately not from Western sources . And those from the heart melodies
Thank you for getting me to listen to several recordings of this marvelous song! I wouldn't call its Jewish origin "unkown" though, perhaps "little" known is more apt. Even at that, it is in the Wikipedia for those who look. Hearing you tell it is better than reading it!
Very interesting, intelligent presentation. Your proposal that the music was "borrowed" & refit to new lyrics is believable. Too bad your music clips are so severely condensed that the music sounds dreadful. I assume you did this to avoid fees. BTW was Ahbez the same person as Moondog?
I'm sorry but this is inaccurate. "Nature Boy" (1948) did not make Cole a star; he was the guy who had already been one before the song. As a matter of fact, it was Cole who is credited with making the round building of Capitol Records possible because of his trio recordings during the 1940s. It was called "the house that Nat built."
Another most recorded some in history, Summertime. It was a song Gershwin was given credit for. He didn’t wrote the music, he didn’t write the lyrics. He stole it.
Although Hush my Heart has a similar opening melody, what follows is not even remotely like Nature Boy. Although unschooled, Eden Ahbez was a very capable musician with a good ear. Any resemblance to Hush my heart is imo, pure coincidence.
@@SophiaMusik Not my ear! I found it in a Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_Boy and from the introduction to this youtube video: ua-cam.com/video/uT7GcjBnWaw/v-deo.html
You were clearly kvelling from this song but I'd like to point out a few things you got horribly wrong: 1) I was born in 1956. In all that time I have almost never heard this song sung in any popular medium. The melody was used countless times on easy listening stations while you were in the waiting room for your doctor. As it isn't a particularly difficult song to sing, so it must have been popular in nightclubs and cabarets. 2. The Yiddish theater was mostly melodramas. "Tate!" They almost never lent themselves out to serious drama and usually had songs in them that had nothing to do with the plot (such as there was). How you make this a precursor to Hollywood movies is more than a stretch. 3. The group of people before the hippies were called "beat-niks" who were heavily into jazz music and counter culture. They were not called "nature boys" which implies a homosexual following. 4.The original Yiddish song sounds like a tango beat. How it became this over-produced version by Nat King Cole is never discussed. Nor how a homeless guy who lived under the Hollywood sign managed to get the song published and sold. 5.The term "magical boy" actually sounds like Jesus who supposedly preached "love". The final lyric is straight out of the film The Wizard of Oz when the Wizard says, "It's not important how much you love, but how much you are loved by others" So much for deep context. 6. Anyone who has read "Alice in Wonderland" knows the quote "The time has come, the walrus said to talk of many things,, Of shoes and ships and sealing wax of cabbages and kings" There's a ripped off lyric for you. Outside of that, .....
George Alexander Aberle born to Jewish father in Brooklyn in 1908. In 1917 traveled by orphan train to Chanute, Kansas. Adopted name was George McGrew. PLAYED PIANO in dance band in the 1930"s. Changed his name to eden ahbez in the 1940's. "Hush, My Heart" by Herman Yablokoff was first performed around 1935. The chances that eden ahbez heard the VERY SMALL SECTION of "Hush, My Heart" that supposedly became "Nature Boy" are "slim to none!" It is more likely that both ahbez AND Yablokoff borrowed for Antonin Dvorak, whether consciously OR unconsciously. Nice fairy tale, but facts matter!
Simcha it’s so good to see you again with your Naked Archeology”. My father was one of those Jewish pioneering physicians who faced invidious discrimination. He had been the Chief Resident in the University of Maryland Hospital and when he completed his residency, he joined the US Air force during the Korean War. When his time in the Air Force was completed he applied to the University of Maryland Hospital, where he had excelled and been the Chief Resident and was denied those all important privileges to treat his patients in his own alma maters hospital. He went to the Board of Directors of the hospital and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. He said if he wasn’t granted privileges he’d go to the press and tell them how a war veteran, Captain in the Air Force who graduated with honors and had been Chief Resident was being treated because of his religion. He got his privileges.
As a black american in NYC who grew up on Nat King Cole, Im so very greatful to know this information. That you for sharing your heritage and experience with us.
I knew about Eden Ahbez and his strange life but I did not know the other part of the story. 2 Ships with Romanian Jews sailed to the Black Sea trying to reach Palestine in those years. The Struma needed maintenance in Istanbul but the Turkish government did not allow, eventually a Russian submarine sunk it. Only one person survived. The Patria reached to the port Of Izmir and stayed there about 2 weeks. Passengers were not allowed to get on land and did not have enough food. At that time the Sephardi Jews of the city, the women cooked and the men delivered the food using rowboats, to the passengers. Eventually that ship made it to Palestine. Despite the British ban on these ships the Patria captain hit the boat to a beach at night and the passengers were saved.
Thank you Simcha! Always learn something watching your videos.
I was born in 1960 and I grew up with the voice of Nat King Cole. I'm a professional musician, and in that sense...race doesn't matter. I grew up in Houston, and always loved his voice and interpretations. Race just didn't matter to me. Mr. Cole was fully one of the most amazing musicians ever.
Well done Simcha. God Bless you and Israel ❤
This is one of my favourite songs, gives me shivers, this is fascinating!
I love learning new things. This topic was interesting to understand "Nature Boys". Makes total sense that a group of ideologies were forced to move west to "survive". I really love listening to history from Simcha.
So nice that Natalie followed in her father's footsteps.
Very beautiful presentation, Simcha. Shalom
Your style of presenting is humbling and appeals to me greatly - lechaim ❤
One of my favorite songs, one of my favorite archeologists, and an AMAZING story! ❤️ Thanks so much for teaching us, Simcha. 🎉
When I first learned this song, I was surprised that it's in melodic minor and doesn't have any of the Tin Pan Alley / Jazz harmonies, I immediately thought that it's very Eastern European sounding. Plus a certain plaintive cadence, like the cantor in the synagogue. Very Jewish sounding without the typical Jewish scale (like Hava Nagila or "Seven Forty").
Thank you for sharing the true history of this song.
It also influenced at least three professional wrestlers,Buddy Rogers,Ric Flair,and Buddy Landell all used the moniker Nature Boy.
🇺🇲 Love and respect to the Jewish people 🇮🇱
Simcha, I have enjoyed all the videos of yours which I have watched, this one, though, was extra special. Thank you.
Brilliant, just brilliant! Shabbat Shalom
20+ years ago my late father was in palliative care, and Nat King Cole's music particularly Nature Boy gave him some peace.
And that song you mention, Cigarettes? You mean Papirossen, dont you?
Thanks…as a composer I’ve learned an interesting tidbit of music history…
Toquinho and Vinicius, out of Brazil, covered this song, too, on their most famous album.
“hush my heart “… Expresses the aching heart of every Israeli after October 7.❤🇮🇱
This time, we have a state. We can choose to act against the enemy. .
Just… incredible. A powerful lesson indeed.
ריגשת בענק תודה שמחה ללמוד ולראות ממך חוכמה צרופה אמא שלי מיאסי כמו הורייך תענוג לגלות ולדעת ישר כח .
שבת שלום בשורות טובות
May the memory of Haim (Herman) Yablakov forever be a blessing! 🙏🕯Thank you Simcha for mentioning the name of Haim Yablokov and for teaching us that he wrote the melody of this song! ❤️ He deserves to be recognized.
George Gershwin took many of his melodies from Jewish songs as well. A nice discussion.
This channel is Gold
I have only one word to describe this video: "Beautifull"!........ Thank you....... Shallom Alechum!
Thanks for your teachings
Thank you, Simcha. Wonderful, introspective story.
Nice Work Mate. Never realized, Eden borrowed/Stole the melody for Nature Boy.
Beautiful!
Grace Slick 1968 is the finest, who used to sing it in cafes. 👌 Donna listens to her all of the time. Bravo, Simcha! Well done. 👏
Hound Dog was written by two Jewish guys
😮
Yiddish didnt disappear it just became NY slang ;)
Didn’t disappear . Spoken by hundreds of thousands of chassidim in monroe , Williamsburg, boro park , square town , Stamford Hill in London , Salford in Manchester UK. Whole communities in Israel . And the numbers are increasing as they take be fruitful and multiply very seriously.
Good work!
You learn something new every day. Thank you for sharing.
Amazing video. Jay and the Americans version is my favorite version of the song
May the memory of Haim Yablakov forever be a blessing! 🙏🕯
Beautiful
Great video, great song, and thanks for posting, but here is something you may not know about it. When I lived in L.A. in the 1970’s, I knew a musician who had known songwriter Eden Ahbez in the 1940’s & 50’s. What is not generally known, is the impact that the Indian guru, Paramahansa Yogananda, had on Ahbez. This is the story as it was told to me 50 years ago by someone whom I strongly suspect had been one of the “Nature Boys” himself.
Yogananda, who took up residence in California in the late 1930’s and lived there for the rest of his life, would often speak of a being he called “Babaji” or “The Deathless Guru”, who was presumably the founder of the particular school of yoga (called “Kriya”) to which Yogananda belonged. Members of the homeless, avant-garde, hippy group of “Nature Boys” would often attend Yogananda’s open talks and retreats in the mid-to-late 1940’s, and it is there that Eden learned of “Babaji” who was believed to be an immortal avatar who lived in the Himalayas, and was able to appear anywhere in the world, to anyone at any time, and who had the outer appearance of a young boy. Although Eden would never have openly claimed to have seen “Babaji”, he did tell some of his close friends that he had been “visited” by The Deathless Guru, and that this being was “the very strange enchanted boy” of the song, who “travelled very far, very far, over land and sea.” Yogananda wrote a chapter on Babaji in his book, Autobiography Of A Yogi.
The medicine the world needs once again. 🥰
Awesome!!!👏 Thanks!!
The core of the melody is definitely there!!
People generally don’t understand history’s threads n how, for example, the roots of the 1960s had roots even to the 1920s in Europe
Why hasn’t anyone noticed that b4 or said anything?
And Rickie Lee Jones on her Pieces of Treasure album. April 2023
Nice. Thank you
George Benson is also one of the best interpretation of Nature Boy by far …
The greatest song i never heard of 😅
I love this video, one of the best I've seen EVER, it's made me emotional and proud. Thank you Simcha. Shabbat Shalom 🇮🇱🇺🇸
A few years ago, there was a Great Performances program on PBS with Michael Tilson Thomas showcasing the music of his grandparents who were stars of the Yiddish Theater. Many tunes for famous broadway songs were borrowed from the Yiddish Theater.
Thanks for connecting those dots that way. All makes more sense now.
thank you for a great video. i always wonder about the connection between the moscow arts theater and yiddish theater.
I love that song in Moulin Rouge!
Well, whaddaya know!
Wow!
Its a paradox that extreme barriers of oppression can foster beauty, but in today’s society we are so often ruined by the opposite, by permissiveness, by open doors.
It is the counterpoint for many Yiddish and Israeli songs like put note between the notes of nature boy
George Benson had a big UK hit with the song in the late 1970s
“Probably the most preformed and covered song”… we don’t deal in probablies we know that most covered song of all time is Yesterday.
No, it is White Christmas by Irving Berlin, a Jewish immigrant. But I love the Beatles!
@ the ai says otherwise
If I had to pick a song by a Jewish songwriter as "the most important song of the 20th century," it would probably be "Like A Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan.
I always thought the song had Middle Eastern Semitic origins . Because of the patterning of the tune. Definately not from Western sources . And those from the heart melodies
Thank you for getting me to listen to several recordings of this marvelous song! I wouldn't call its Jewish origin "unkown" though, perhaps "little" known is more apt. Even at that, it is in the Wikipedia for those who look. Hearing you tell it is better than reading it!
Love and respect every Race, Religion and nationality ❤love and eternal peace for mankind. ❤
Very interesting, intelligent presentation. Your proposal that the music was "borrowed" & refit to new lyrics is believable. Too bad your music clips are so severely condensed that the music sounds dreadful. I assume you did this to avoid fees. BTW was Ahbez the same person as Moondog?
the "most important" idk but a good one for sure and this story is also a good one and yeah for sure it's amazing and likely so think I
You forgot Bob Dylan with his song A Hard Rain Is Gonna Fall.
I’m a post hippy
I'm sorry but this is inaccurate. "Nature Boy" (1948) did not make Cole a star; he was the guy who had already been one before the song. As a matter of fact, it was Cole who is credited with making the round building of Capitol Records possible because of his trio recordings during the 1940s. It was called "the house that Nat built."
Another most recorded some in history, Summertime. It was a song Gershwin was given credit for. He didn’t wrote the music, he didn’t write the lyrics. He stole it.
Thanks
great story
What do you think happened to Hollywood, perhaps you could do a video on this.
I know what happens. People abandon god, then they become very evil and predatory and nihilistic.
@@bobirving6052he told what happened, watch again with open eyes
Unfortunately, anyone who is anyway attached to Hollyweird has earned a bad reputation, warranted or not 😢
Although Hush my Heart has a similar opening melody, what follows is not even remotely like Nature Boy. Although unschooled, Eden Ahbez was a very capable musician with a good ear. Any resemblance to Hush my heart is imo, pure coincidence.
Who ripped off whom? Antonin Dvorak Piano Quintet No. 2 Op. 81 Dumka. Andante con moto.
🎯 good ear.
@@SophiaMusik Not my ear! I found it in a Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_Boy and from the introduction to this youtube video: ua-cam.com/video/uT7GcjBnWaw/v-deo.html
@@michaelmcneill5339 Very good catch!
That sounds so odd.
You were clearly kvelling from this song but I'd like to point out a few things you got horribly wrong:
1) I was born in 1956. In all that time I have almost never heard this song sung in any popular medium. The melody was used countless times on easy listening stations while you were in the waiting room for your doctor. As it isn't a particularly difficult song to sing, so it must have been popular in nightclubs and cabarets.
2. The Yiddish theater was mostly melodramas. "Tate!" They almost never lent themselves out to serious drama and usually had songs in them that had nothing to do with the plot (such as there was). How you make this a precursor to Hollywood movies is more than a stretch.
3. The group of people before the hippies were called "beat-niks" who were heavily into jazz music and counter culture. They were not called "nature boys" which implies a homosexual following.
4.The original Yiddish song sounds like a tango beat. How it became this over-produced version by Nat King Cole is never discussed. Nor how a homeless guy who lived under the Hollywood sign managed to get the song published and sold.
5.The term "magical boy" actually sounds like Jesus who supposedly preached "love". The final lyric is straight out of the film The Wizard of Oz when the Wizard says, "It's not important how much you love, but how much you are loved by others" So much for deep context.
6. Anyone who has read "Alice in Wonderland" knows the quote "The time has come, the walrus said to talk of many things,, Of shoes and ships and sealing wax of cabbages and kings" There's a ripped off lyric for you.
Outside of that, .....
George Alexander Aberle born to Jewish father in Brooklyn in 1908. In 1917 traveled by orphan train to Chanute, Kansas. Adopted name was George McGrew.
PLAYED PIANO in dance band in the 1930"s. Changed his name to eden ahbez in the 1940's. "Hush, My Heart" by Herman Yablokoff was first performed around 1935.
The chances that eden ahbez heard the VERY SMALL SECTION of "Hush, My Heart" that supposedly became "Nature Boy" are "slim to none!" It is more likely that both
ahbez AND Yablokoff borrowed for Antonin Dvorak, whether consciously OR unconsciously. Nice fairy tale, but facts matter!
The Boy with Green Hair was a movie for isolationists, socialists, and anarchists! You did not research enough. This song was made for this movie.
lol
He knows film history
He knows
😄👍
❤
"Nature Boy" ?!? I've never heard it.
very good, interesting and it is the best song ever
ואו
B’h ✡️🇮🇱
Never heard of it. I thought " Yesterday" was the most covered song.