If you’ve bid recently at eBay on an original 1960 Del-Fi pressing of Eden’s Island, then you probably noticed its final price-tag hovering right around two-hundred bucks. And if that’s too rich for your blood, then here’s some good news: Captain High Records just reissued it to 180 gram vinyl. One of the nice things about this…
At this point, it is difficult to say when the well will run dry. Every month, it seems, I come across another Eden Ahbez record, lead-sheet, or reel-to-reel tape that nearly slipped through the cracks of time. “Song of the Stranger,” by Kuldip Singh, is the latest though doubtful the last. It was released as the…
It’s been a little dry for news around here lately… So I am happy to announce a new book—titled Bohemian Highways: Art & Culture Abide Then Divide Along the California Coast (Guardian Stewardship Editions)—which features a 20-page chapter penned yours truly (Brian Chidester) on Eden Ahbez’s lost sheet music. The book will be available through…
I first spoke to Craig Chereek after he posted this short blog about Eden Ahbez in 2010: https://chereek.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/eden-ahbez-lives/ We’ve talked over the phone several times in the ensuing years and, this past winter, Craig agreed to let me interview him for the Ahbez biography I’m currently working on. (He calls him “ahbe” throughout.) The interview was…
It’s been a few months since poet Rod McKuen (1933-2015) passed away and it seems only fitting that the Eden’s Island Blog pay tribute to his influence on the world of spoken word recordings, of which Eden Ahbez also partook. A few days ago, I typed in a search box the words “rod mckuen” and “eden ahbez,” and…
For those that regularly follow the Eden’s Island Blog, you may have noticed that jazz saxman Mort Weiss recently commented on one of our blogs. Back in the day, Weiss went by the name Mort Wise, and, with his band the Wisemen, recorded one of Eden Ahbez’s tunes—”Wild Boy”—for Sierra Records in June 1959. A…
This is the first I’ve heard of it, but the below link has an interview with ’70s L.A. songwriter/beatnik Tom Waits, wherein he claims he was picked up and chauffeured into town as a 19-year-old hitchhiker by none other than Eden Ahbez! See here: http://www.eastofborneo.org/archives/tom-waits-hitchhikes-to-la-at-19
Has anyone else noticed a recent up-tick in interest for Eden Ahbez’s work? Fittingly, “Nature Boy” continues to generate any number of covers, from the David Bowie/Massive Attack version for the Moulin Rouge film soundtrack of 2001, to the new Lady Gaga/Tony Bennett cover of last fall, to acapella renditions performed by collegiate choirs at Yale…
Anna Ahbez (née Annette Jacobson) was, to her songwriter husband, a lover, a mother to his only child, and a fellow nature enthusiast. From 1946-68, Eden Ahbez commemorated Anna in more than a dozen songs, most of them still unreleased. But who was this mysterious woman that stood side-by-side with her nature boy husband at…
Eden Ahbez wrote nearly a thousand songs during his long lifetime. Less than a hundred, however, made their way to vinyl. During my twenty years researching Ahbez’s life and work, I’ve known about a song titled “Green Flamingo” for more than half that time. I’d previously thought, however, that it was never released. I’m happy to…
EDEN’S ISLAND 