Eden’s Island (reissue, 1960)
EVERLAND
8/10
T wasn’t until 1995 – the year Eden Ahbez died – that his only album reappeared in print, 35 years after its initial release. Bob Keane, Del-Fi Records’ founder, had already had eight years to reissue it since revitalising his label, and his hesitancy spoke volumes. While Ahbez had scored actual hits with his songs, others had performed them, notably “Nature Boy”, a 1948 No 1 for Nat ‘King’ Cole, and now an endlessly recycled page in the Great American Songbook. , meanwhile, a conceptual curio, had sold only a few hundred
