Nature Boy is a jazz pop standard written by eden ahbez and first recorded by Nat King Cole. It was released as a Capitol single on March 29, 1948 and later appeared on the 1961 album The Nat King Cole Story. The song, a reflection on a mysterious wandering boy and the line “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return,” was inspired by the 1940s Los Angeles Nature Boys and ahbez’s Naturmensch philosophy. Cole’s version, arranged with strings and flute by Frank De Vol, topped the Billboard charts for 15 weeks and sold over a million copies, helping launch his solo career and reach a white audience. The tune was involved in a plagiarism case with Herman Yablokoff that was settled out of court, and in 1999 it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Since then Nature Boy has become a jazz and pop standard with many covers by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, and Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, and it has appeared in films including Moulin Rouge.
