Scatman John (John Paul Larkin, March 13, 1942 – December 3, 1999) was an American musician.
For numerous decades, he was a well-known jazz pianist and vocalist who made a name for himself by fusing scat singing with dance music in the 1990s. Between 1986 and 2001, he released five studio albums.
Infancy
A native of El Monte, California, Larkin was raised in Los Angeles. By the time he learned to speak, he had a terrible stutter. His stutter exacerbated the trauma he suffered as a child.
It wasn’t until he was twelve years old that Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, among others, introduced him to scat singing. He used the piano to express himself artistically in order to make up for his lack of ability to communicate verbally.
Life in The Here and Now
Scatman Judy Larkin was the name of John’s wife. They were married until 1999, the year he passed away in a car accident.
Her husband’s profession received a lot of support from Judy, both while he was still living and after he died.
The Reason for Death
Even though he was diagnosed with lung cancer in the fall of 1998, Larkin continued to perform despite being told to ease up on his workload.
Take Your Time, Larkin’s final album as Scatman John, was released in June 1999. After that, he was placed in a medically induced coma.
Larkin died on December 3, 1999, at the age of 57, at his Los Angeles home, surrounded by his wife Judy, his mother Harriet, and his brother Bill. In 2001, his ashes were dispersed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Malibu, California, where he had been cremated.
Career
In 1981, Sam Phipps released Animal Sounds, which featured his first recorded performance. The Transition label published his debut album, John Larkin, in 1986. With the help of Marcia Larkin, John created this CD. Joe Farrell played saxophone on it.
In 1990, Larkin relocated to Berlin, Germany, in order to further his profession. Once he arrived, he encountered a jazz scene that was welcoming and enthusiastic, and he began performing in it.
His first attempt at singing was inspired by a standing ovation he received for his performance of the song “Sunshine on the Street.
” When Manfred Zähringer from Iceberg Records (Denmark) suggested that scat singing be combined with modern dance music and hip hop effects, he was immediately enthusiastic about the idea. In the beginning, Larkin was apprehensive, afraid of being mocked and criticized, but BMG Hamburg was welcoming.
Musician Larkin was concerned that audiences could hear his stuttering, and his wife Judy encouraged him to write about it.
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The first single, “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop),” was produced by Ingo Kays and Tony Catania. He changed his name to “Scatman” John after his first great hit.
The year was 1995, and Larkin was 53 years old. Sales of his first single were modest at first but eventually climbed to number one in numerous countries and sold more than six million albums globally.
” Ska-Ba-Dop-Bop (Scatman)” was one of his most popular songs in Europe and Japan, and remains one of his best-selling and best-known tracks. Later, he released “Scatman’s World,” which peaked at number 10 on the UK Singles chart and went on to sell one million copies while charting well across Europe.
After becoming an internet joke, “Scatman’s World” saw a rebirth in 2019.
He launched his debut album under the pseudonym Scatman John, also titled Scatman’s World, following the success of his first two songs.
The album went on to sell millions of copies worldwide, and a Scatman John design appeared on Coca-Cola cans as a result of its success. An international promotional and concert tour has begun, taking him to the European and Asian continents.
“The kids yelled for five minutes straight, I couldn’t start the song,” Larkin remarked, referring to a performance in Spain.
Everybody Jam! was Scatman John’s second album, released in 1996. The album and its accompanying single did well in Japan, where he would achieve greater success than anywhere else in the globe, despite the fact that it was not as successful internationally as his debut.
In Europe, his subsequent singles were a commercial failure and earned him the moniker “two-hit wonder.”
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The hit singles “Priori Scat” and “Su Su Su Super Ki Re I which were commissioned by Japanese firms for ads for pudding and cosmetics, respectively, were included in Everybody JamJapanese !’s release.
Scatultraman, a single from the Ultraman series, features characters from the series sporting Scatman’s signature helmet and mustache on the cover art.
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