Learning it was Eden

In the spring of 1988 I was at my desk when the front door swung open. A stream of sunlight flooded the lobby and a rather small figure stepped into the illuminated doorway. As this person moved forward, I was able to discern a little old man, not much over five feet tall, with flowing hair as white as snow and a beard to match. He was dressed all in white with the majority of what you could see was a long jacket made of a quilt-like material. I said hello and he informed me that he was there to work with Joe in the studio. Just then Joe, whom I knew, entered and made our introduction: “Craig, meet Ahbe.”

This was Salty Dog Recording Studio in Van Nuys and, after years of training at the Music Lab in Hollywood, two friends and I had purchased the studio in late ’87. Many notable artists had connections to Salty Dog, like George Harrison, Joe Cocker, Dolly Parton, Hoyt Axton and many others. Joe was a recording engineer who worked there at times and Ahbe was one of his clients.

Later in the afternoon, Ahbe came out of the studio and we talked. He spoke of love and harmony, peace and kindness, and his reverence for nature. His speech had a rhythmic cadence that was captivating and mesmerizing. I came to enjoy those talks with Ahbe.

One day after finishing his recording and Joe was in mixing what they were working on, he wandered out and sat down. He was munching on some potato chips and, at one point, he stopped mid-sentence and smiled widely as he held a chip high in the air before me. 

“Look!” he said. “It’s shaped like a heart!” 

Then he expressed his fondness for the times we shared and passed the unusually shaped potato chip across my desk. I took a cassette out of its case and placed the chip inside for safekeeping.

Fast forward to March 1995. Salty Dog had been sold several years before and I got word through the grapevine that Abhe had passed away at the age of 86 due to injuries he sustained in a car crash. It was not until after his death that the full identity of my old friend was revealed to me.

Abhe was Eden Ahbez, the singer and songwriter who composed the haunting melody “Nature Boy.” His song was recorded by Nat King Cole in 1948 and shot to number one on the charts. Little did I know that the kindly old man I had spent time with was such a character of history.

Fast forward once again to 2015 and I have become the historian at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga and live in the Verdugo Hills. It was then my responsibility to discover any and all information that I could about Eden Ahbez as he was known to live for a time in Big Tujunga Canyon. He was the Nature Boy himself and an interesting character of our community’s collective memory.

I came to learn that Salty Dog was originally founded by David Coe in his home in Sunland prior to moving to Van Nuys in the mid ’70s. The best part of the story is yet to come though after I made the acquaintance of Shirley Neuenswander. I’m very sad to say that we recently lost Shirley, and she will be missed, but not before she helped me uncover the mystery of where Eden lived in Big Tujunga Canyon. 

Shirley had known Ahbe, as his friends called him, way back in the 1950s when he lived in the canyon in a little shack made of scrap wood. With her guidance, a discovery would be made that would lead to great things in the Big T. That wonderful part of the story in two weeks when I bring you “Discovering Eden’s Dharmaland.”