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Bill pester12/29/2023 Namely, one that asks the fascinating question: Could Knutsen Hawaiian guitar-playing William Pester be the “Nature Boy” eden abhez wrote of in the famous song? Much of the story can be gleaned from the Internet writings of Gordon Kennedy, who wrote “Children of the Sun,” a book that “chronicles the emergence of primitivism, naturopathic medicine and eco consciousness as it traveled from 19 th Century Germany to the West Coast of the United States between WWI and WWII.”Īfter spending a fair amount of time investigating the topic, I thought I had the makings of a pretty interesting blog. Bruce sent me links to several online sources that have investigated ahbez, who, in the 1940’s, was one of the California “Nature Boys (think “early hippies”). Our friend Bruce is a big Nat King Cole fan, and so knew much of the back story of the strange haunting tune that Nat made famous (and similarly made Cole famous). He’s the (legendary, it turns out) writer of the 7-week number 1 hit of 1948, “Nature Boy.” Huh? Who is “eden ahbez”? (and why is his name not capitalized?) Some of you probably know I admit I did not. No one recognized him, but one colleague, Bruce Miyagishima, immediately mistook Pester for eden ahbez. Hoping simply to identify the man visiting Pester at his hut in Palm Canyon (surely he must be some silent film star or other celebrity), I forwarded the image to my wife’s archivist friends at Paramount Studios. Apparently, he was sometimes incorrectly referred to as “Peter Pester” due to confusion with a similar character of the 1920s & 30s, “Peter the Hermit” of Hollywood. By the way, it turns out that the long-haired fellow I had been calling “Peter Pester” since the beginning of the Knutsen Archives was in fact William (or “Bill”) Pester. Several weeks ago, I included the newly-discovered photo above in my blog on historical Knutsen players. I admit I was clueless, and am frankly surprised I never thought about it until now, despite it being right up my alley – and with, yes, even a round-about Knutsen connection. You all know the song − do you know the story behind it, or even who wrote it?
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