John Paul Larkin (March 13, 1942 – December 3, 1999), better known by his stage name
Scatman John (sometimes credited as
Scatman internationally), was an American
jazz musicianJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
and
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
who created a fusion of
scat singingIn vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with random vocables and syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice....
and
dance musicThis article is about dance music in general. You may also be looking for electronic dance music or dance-pop.Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
, best known for his 1994 hit "Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)". As John also stuttered, he liked to say, this was a process of "turning my biggest problem into my biggest asset".
John Paul Larkin (March 13, 1942 – December 3, 1999), better known by his stage name
Scatman John (sometimes credited as
Scatman internationally), was an American
jazz musicianJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
and
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
who created a fusion of
scat singingIn vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with random vocables and syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice....
and
dance musicThis article is about dance music in general. You may also be looking for electronic dance music or dance-pop.Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
, best known for his 1994 hit "Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)". As John also stuttered, he liked to say, this was a process of "turning my biggest problem into my biggest asset". He has sold millions of recordings worldwide and was named "Best New Artist" in the Echo Awards in both Japan and Germany. He was a recipient of the
American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationThe American Speech-Language-Hearing Association is a professional association for speech-language pathologists, audiologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists in the United States and internationally...
's
Annie GlennAnnie Glenn is the wife of former astronaut and Senator John Glenn.-Private life:Annie was born in 1920 to Homer and Margaret Castor of Columbus, Ohio. In 1923, Dr. Castor and his family moved to New Concord, Ohio, where they became friends with the family of John Hershel Glenn, Sr...
Award for outstanding service to the stuttering community and was inducted into the United States National Stuttering Association Hall of Fame.
Biography
Born in
El MonteEl Monte is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, and is a suburb of Los Angeles. The city's slogans are "the end of the Santa Fe Trail" and "Welcome to Friendly El Monte." As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 115,965. As of 2002, El Monte is the 191st...
,
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
, he suffered from a severe stammer "since [he] started talking", which led to an emotionally traumatic childhood. Even at the peak of his success in 1995, journalists reported that during interviews he "hardly finishes a sentence without repeating the phrase at least six or seven times". At age 12 he began to learn piano, and was introduced to the art of
scat singingIn vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with random vocables and syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice....
at 14 through records by
Ella FitzgeraldElla Jane Fitzgerald , also known as "Lady Ella", and the "First Lady of Song", was an American jazz vocalist....
and
Louis ArmstrongLouis Daniel Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, amongst others. The piano provided him with a means of artistic expression to compensate for his speech difficulties. He remarked in a 1996 interview that "playing piano gave me a way to speak... I hid behind the piano because I was scared of talking."
He became a professional jazz pianist in the 1970s and
'80sThe 1980s was the decade that ran from January 1, 1980, to December 31, 1989.The time period saw social, economic and general change as wealth and production migrated to newly industrializing economies...
, playing many gigs in jazz clubs around
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the municipality of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123.445 inhabitants...
. In 1986, he released the self-titled album
John Larkin on the Transition label, copies of which are now extremely rare. He claimed to have "hundreds of them lying around in [his] closet at home". Around this time, alcoholism and drug addiction were also beginning to take a hold of his life. When fellow musician and friend
Joe FarrellJoseph Carl Firrantello , known as Joe Farrell, was an American jazz saxophonist and flutist. He is best known for a series of albums under his own name on the CTI record label and for playing in the initial incarnation of Chick Corea's Return to Forever.-Biography:Farrell was born in Chicago...
, who also had a drug problem, died of bone cancer in 1986, Larkin decided to beat his habits. He eventually did so, largely with the help of his new wife Judy, also a recovering alcoholic. "You have talent", she told him. "I'm going to make something out of you".
Birth of "Scatman John"
To advance his career in 1990, he moved to
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
. From there he discovered the appreciative jazz culture and started playing jazz gigs. Here he decided to add singing to his act for the first time, inspired by the standing ovation he received for his rendition of the song "
On the Sunny Side of the Street"On the Sunny Side of the Street" is a song with music composed by Jimmy McHugh and lyrics by Dorothy Fields, which was introduced in the Broadway musical Lew Leslie's International Revue, starring Harry Richman and Gertrude Lawrence....
". Soon after, his agent Manfred Zähringer from Iceberg Records in Denmark thought of combining scat-singing with modern
dance musicThis article is about dance music in general. You may also be looking for electronic dance music or dance-pop.Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
and
hip hopHip hop music is a musical genre which developed alongside hip hop culture, and is commonly based on concepts of loop, rapping, freestyle, DJing, scratching, sampling and beatboxing. The music is used to express concerns of political, social, and personal issues...
sounds. Larkin was resistant at first but BMG Hamburg was open.
Larkin was mainly scared that listeners would realize he stuttered, so Judy suggested that he talk about it directly in his music. Working with dance producers Ingo Kays and Tony Catania, he recorded the first single, "
Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)"Scatman " is a song by Scatman John. The song is released as the first single from his debut album Scatman's World. The lyrics detail how he overcame his difficulties with stuttering by turning them into the ability to scat-sing, and encourages children who stutter not to give up...
", a song intended to inspire children who stuttered to overcome adversity. He adopted the new name and persona of Scatman John.
International success
In 1995, at age 52, he became a worldwide star. Sales of his debut single were slow at first, but gradually reached #1 in many countries and sold over six million records worldwide. "Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)" which charted quite highly across Europe remains his biggest-selling and most well-known song. He later followed up with the song "
Scatman's World"Scatman's World" is a song by Scatman John, the second single from the album of the same name and the follow-up to the international smash hit "Scatman ". The song entered #14 of its first week in the UK Singles chart, and then peaked at #10...
" entering the
UK Singles chartThe UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record industry. The full chart contains the top 200 singles based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 of this list...
at #10, which met lesser but still notable success, selling a million copies and charting highly throughout Europe.
Following the success of these two singles, he released his debut album, also entitled Scatman's World, which entered the top 10 album charts in many countries including his then home Germany as well as in Switzerland, Finland and Norway, which eventually sold millions of copies worldwide, He began a promotional and concert tour of Europe and Asia. "At an appearance I did in Spain, the kids screamed for five minutes straight, I couldn't start the song", he once recounted.
Post-"Scatman's World"
The second Scatman John album, Everybody Jam!, was released in 1996. While nowhere near as successful on an international level as his debut, the album and
accompanying single"Everybody Jam!" is a song by Scatman John, released as a single from the album of the same name. It is a tribute to the music of Louis Armstrong with samples of his voice edited into the track as if in conversation with the Scatman....
took off in
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, the country in which he would see success on a larger scale than anywhere else in the world. He was so popular there that Japanese toy stores sold dolls of his likeness and he appeared on phone cards and Coca Cola cans. The Japanese version of
Everybody Jam! included a total of five bonus tracks, including the hit singles there "Su Su Su Super Kirei" and "
Pripri Scat"Pripri Scat" is one of several Scatman John singles released exclusively in Japan, and only as a 3-inch disc. The song was recorded as a tie-in to a Japanese pudding TV commercial, but this is not particularly evident in the lyrics which explore his usual themes of love and paradise...
", which were commissioned by Japanese companies for commercials for
cosmeticsCosmetics are substances used to enhance the appearance or odor of the human body. Cosmetics include skin-care creams, lotions, powders, perfumes, lipsticks, fingernail and toe nail polish, eye and facial makeup, permanent waves, colored contact lenses, hair colors, [hair sprays] and gels,...
and
puddingPudding most often refers to a dessert, but can also refer to a savory dish in some dialects.In the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries, pudding refers to rich, fairly homogeneous starch- or dairy-based desserts , or, informally, is used to refer to any dessert...
respectively. The
Ultramanis a fictional character featured in tokusatsu, or "special effects" television programs in Japan. Ultraman made his debut in the tokusatsu SF/kaiju/superhero TV series, Ultra Q: Ultraman: Special Effects Fantasy Series, a follow-up to the television series Ultra Q...
franchise even jumped on the Scatman bandwagon, releasing a single entitled "Scatultraman", the cover art of which featured the Ultraman characters in hats and moustaches.
Final years
In 1999, he released his third and final album as Scatman John,
Take Your Time. It was later revealed that he had been battling ill health since late 1998. He continued work on the album despite being told to take it easy from his substantial workload. He was later diagnosed with
lung cancerLung cancer is a disease of uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. This growth may lead to metastasis, which is the invasion of adjacent tissue and infiltration beyond the lungs. The vast majority of primary lung cancers are carcinomas of the lung, derived from epithelial cells...
and soon went into intensive treatment. He maintained a positive attitude throughout, declaring that "Whatever God wants is fine by me... I've had the very best life. I have tasted beauty". He died in his Los Angeles home on December 3, 1999. He was cremated and was buried at sea near
Malibu, CaliforniaMalibu is an incorporated city in western Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city population is 12,575....
.
Studio Albums
- John Larkin (1986) - Not released commercially
- Scatman's World
Scatman's World is debut album by American musician Scatman John, recorded after the worldwide success of his debut single "Scatman". It is somewhat of a concept album dealing with an imaginary Utopian society named "Scatland"...
(1995)
- Everybody Jam!
Everybody Jam! is the second album by Scatman John. The album continues along the thematic lines of the first album but with an evolved sound, and certainly cemented his popularity in Japan, released there with no less than five bonus tracks....
(1996)
- Take Your Time
Take Your Time is the third album by Scatman John, the album is his final release. Released six months before his death on December 3; although he suffered from lung cancer through most of the recording, he still managed to release the album....
(1999)
Compilation Albums
- Listen to the Scatman (2001)
- The Best of Scatman John
The Best of Scatman John is a 2002 compilation album of Scatman John's greatest hits.-Track listing:#"Scatman "#"Scatman's World"#"Only You"#"Scatmambo"#"Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word"#"Scatmusic"#"Ichi Ni San...Go"...
(2002) - Japan only
Singles
- "Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)" (1994)
- "Scatman's World
"Scatman's World" is a song by Scatman John, the second single from the album of the same name and the follow-up to the international smash hit "Scatman ". The song entered #14 of its first week in the UK Singles chart, and then peaked at #10...
" (1995)
- "Song of Scatland
"Song of Scatland" is the third single from Scatman John's debut album, Scatman's World. The song is a slow ballad about the imaginary Utopian kingdom of "Scatland", and is easily his most bizarre moment...
" (1995)
- "Only You
"Only You" is a song by Scatman John. It was released in Japan as the fourth single from the album Scatman's World, with identical artwork to the "Song of Scatland" single released in other countries.-Single track listing:#"Only You"...
" (1995)
- "Scat Paradise
Scat Paradise is a Scatman John EP released only in Japan. It features the fan favourite "Hey, You!", a rarity previously only available as the B-side to the infamous "Song of Scatland" single and later remixed and re-released as "U-Turn" on the Everybody Jam! album."Jazzology" is an ode to the...
" EP (1995)
- "Su Su Su Super Ki Re i" (1996)
- "Pripri Scat
"Pripri Scat" is one of several Scatman John singles released exclusively in Japan, and only as a 3-inch disc. The song was recorded as a tie-in to a Japanese pudding TV commercial, but this is not particularly evident in the lyrics which explore his usual themes of love and paradise...
" (1996)
- "Everybody Jam!
"Everybody Jam!" is a song by Scatman John, released as a single from the album of the same name. It is a tribute to the music of Louis Armstrong with samples of his voice edited into the track as if in conversation with the Scatman....
" (1996)
- "Let It Go" (1996)
- "Scatmambo
"Scatmambo" is a song by Scatman John, an experiment with mambo sounds released in 1998 as the first single from his third mainstream album Take Your Time.-Single track listing:...
" (1998)
- "The Chickadee Song
"The Chickadee Song" is a song by Scatman John, the second single from his third mainstream album Take Your Time, and another in a series of experiments with Cuban musical sounds...
" (1999)
External links