The Greatest Thing

At first it was just an irritant, buzzing around my mind, dodging my attempts to bring it to life... A tantalizing, hide-and-seek thought.

We  had been hell-bent on finding a proper expression for an immodest 95-year-old to make that might placate some of the critics who just wish we would fold our tent and slink away.

I kept hearing Nat "King" Cole and Sarah Vaughn in my head  and the Divine One was crooning a capella...No accompaniment. 

Sarah DID THAT when she allowed her self to showcase the best voice around to its best advantage !

And then, just as if I had found the old shellac 78 that I  bought back in 1948 when I was working for United Press and planning a trip to Manhattan's 52nd St. to SEE Sarah Vaughn, Art Tatum, Roy Eldridge and the  Duke Ellington orchestra.

I started humming, and the words would get in the right place, but that last sentence was what I was looking for and it still amazes me that such a mammoth gut-punch could've ever gone wobbly in my memory.


Both the words and music are credited to what we used to call "the first Hippie"-- a young man of Lebanese descent who spelled his name always in lowercase letters (eden ahbez) and affected white robes, long hair and a beard who lived under the Hollywood sign when he wasn't banging away at a piano for change.

In 1947, eden put this song together and took it to Nat Cole who was leaving his post as premier jazz pianist in search of pop stardom.

Cole recorded this song with the Frank de Vol house-orchestra at Capitol.  It was in the number one Billboard spotlight for two months.  Sarah recorded her a capella version for the purist  audience-- and a legend was completed.

Our composer,  ahbez, never to my knowledge published anymore sheet music. But he hacked away at it for the rest of his life.  He had to divvy royalties  with a conservative (Hassid ?) musician who accused him of plagiarism.

Most have forgotten the melody and a few may, like us, have the words rattling around in our baggage.

But it is still remarkable that something as banal...as simple... as a pop song should have such a priceless nugget of truth within it--- as it's peroration, actually.

"There was a Boy...A very strange, enchanted Boy
"Who traveled very far away... And when he came my way one  day ... 
"We  talked of many things-- fools and Kings-- before he said to me:

"The greatest thing you will ever learn is just too love and be loved in return !!"

Your Feast For The Fourth

We present An Independence Day TREAT! One of the Greatest American Poems.

Shine, Perishing Republic By Robinson Jeffers

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,       heavily thickening to empire, And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops       and sighs out, and the mass hardens, I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make       fruit, the fruit rots to make earth. Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances,       ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother. You making  haste on decay: not blameworthy; life       is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than       mountains; shine, perishing republic. But for my children, I would have them keep their       distance from the thickening center; Corruption Never has been compulsory, and when the cities lie at the       monster’s feet there are left the mountains. And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man,       a clever servant, insufferable master. There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught       —they say—God, when he walked on earth.