I just want to say off the bat that I can speculate really well myself, was culturally adjacent, and am pretty good with the language. So if you don't have more or novel information on this subject than I have, you probably don't have an answer I'm looking for.
I was born in the late 1960's. That means for a lot of 1970's lingo I was wasn't really participating in the culture, but I was adjacent enough to it that I could pick it up from context. For example, I know intuitively what "groovy" meant.
However, there's one term that I've been at a loss to figure out the meaning of for the last 50 years: "natural". I know what it means today (basically the opposite of "artificial"). However, its pretty clear there was a different meaning, used in a different context, in the early 1970's. I'll give a some examples:
dancing in the moonlight
everybody's feeling warm and bright
its such a fine and natural sight
everybody's dancing in the moonlight
- Dancing in the Moonlight, written in 1970.
Sweet, sweet Connie, doin' her act
She had the whole show and that's a natural fact
- American Band, released in 1973.
You know that dealer is a man
With love grass in his hand
But the pusher is a monster
And not a natural man
- The Pusher, first released in 1968
Before the day I met you
Life was so unkind
You're the key
To my piece of mind
'Cause you make me feel
You make me feel
you make me feel
Like a natural woman
- Natural Woman, first released in 1967
I'm pretty sure there are more I've stumbled across over the years, but these are the ones I remembered.
Now I'm pretty sure this form of the word is being used as an intensifier. That probably explains why its so tough for me to suss out any further meaning from it via context. However, I don't think its a completely general intensifier.
I'm hoping someone can come in here with answers that rely on one (or more) of 3 things:
- More examples, that allow us to better triangulate this term's early 1970's meaning.
- First hand knowledge as someone who was the right age (probably between 60 and 70 now) to report how this was actually used and what was meant when it was used.
- Some reference to someone else doing one of the above.
Edit, I've added a new example from the late 1960's I came across, and a nearly identical one also from the late 60's that multiple people in the comments pointed out.
The interesting thing about these two in addition to being a bit earlier, is that they are both referring to tangible things, whereas the later 2 are not. So while I could see an argument that this is a straight translation of words like "real" or "authentic" when applied to women or men, nobody in the modern era would say something like "such a fine and real sight". There's still some nuance of meaning lost here.
Also, from the context in Natural Woman, it doesn't look like she was feeling particularly fake otherwise. Just stressed. So it seems more like it was meant to imply "un-stressed" or "relaxed", or in modern lingo, "chill" (a sense that would work better in Dancing in the Moonlight as well)