Nature Boy

The poster words were recorded by Nat King Cole.  Nature Boy“is track #10 on the album The World Of Nat King Cole. It was written by Ahbez, Eden but made  famous by Nat.

This poster is my artistic tribute to this song, which has become a jazz standard.

Eden was a singer songwriter, Hippy nomad, beat poet,  who lived in a park in LA.

Online I found recordings by Cher, Celine Dion and  American Idol  contestant in 2011 Casey Abrams.   Furthermore, it was used in the movie Boy with the Green Hair.

I like the Ella Fitzgerald version of  Nature Boy because of the beautiful background guitar.

Another haunting version is by  Afro Blue Nature Boy .

I often enjoy writing with music in the background to find a rhythm and tone.  As a young writer I loved jazz.  Not many people in my household like it.  But secretly, I still love a bit of jazz,especially something as haunting as this, which can be sensitively interpreted by the artist and  has an interesting background story.

Toni Morrison wrote a book called Jazz that two university class mates bought for me one birthday, a sad tale but with a beautiful use of language that I have never forgotten.

Perhaps I’ll write some Haiku with this melody running through my head.  Perhaps I’ll write a novel with someone as a jazz musician (wrote a poem called that once).

What books do you know which are greatly inspired by music for their structure and language?