Dittos to ex-dem!
The Man who lived under the “L”
No sign of ahbez. So he went to the police.
“Sure we know him,” said one of the officers. A while back, ahbez had been stopped by a cop who figured from the shoulder-length hair – this was 1946, remember – that the guy was a nut who’d escaped from the asylum. ahbe told him calmly, “I look crazy, but I’m not. Other people don’t look crazy, but they are.” The officer chewed that one over and eventually replied, “You know, bud, you’re right. If anybody gives you any trouble, let me know.” When Mort Ruby made his enquiries, the police told him ahbez didn’t stay anywhere too long, but you might find him up on the hill under one of the ‘L’s in the ‘HOLLYWOOD’ sign.” So Ruby clambered up to the famous sign, and there under the first “L” he found eden ahbez asleep. When he woke up, the songwriter didn’t recognize Cole’s manager. He’d forgotten him completely.
By the time Mort Ruby had a deal on the song, Capitol Records had decided the lyric really was too far out. And that was that, until August 12th 1947, when, at the end of a recording session with a full orchestra and with a few minutes to spare, Cole suggested that they should try the ahbez number. In March 1948 Capitol issued the song “Lost April”, with “Nature Boy” as the B side. By now, there was a rumor in the music business that Nat Cole had one of the greatest songs ever up his sleeve. The first disc jockey to receive the record was Jerry Marshall at New York’s WNEW. He listened to “Lost April”, shrugged, and decided to play the flip side. On March 22nd 1948, at 2.16pm, on WNEW’s “Music Hall”, Marshall introduced the record with the words:
Here’s a winner – a song everybody is going to love.
By 2.20pm the phone calls were flooding into the station. Within a few weeks, while Nat and Maria Cole were on their honeymoon, the song was America’s Number One, a million-seller and a phenomenon. As The New York Age reported…
