John Paul Larkin
| Scatman John | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | John Paul Larkin |
| Born |
March 13, 1942 El Monte, California, U.S. |
| Died | December 3, 1999 (aged 57) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) | Music artist |
| Instruments | |
| Years active | 1976–1999 |
| Labels | |
John Paul Larkin (March 13, 1942 – December 3, 1999), better known by his stage name Scatman John, was an American music artist who created a fusion of scat singing and dance music, best known for his 1995 hits "Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)" and "Scatman's World" and 1996 hit "Everybody Jam!"
As a stutterer, Larkin stated that scatting was "turning [his] biggest problem into [his] biggest asset." Scatman John 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 Association's Annie Glenn Award for outstanding service to the stuttering community and National Stuttering Association Hall of Fame.
Born in El Monte, California, Larkin suffered a severe stutter from the time he learned to speak, which led to an emotionally traumatic childhood. At age twelve he began to learn piano, and was introduced to the art of scat singing at the age of fourteen through records by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, among others. The piano provided him with a means of artistic expression to compensate for his speech difficulties, as he "hid behind [the] piano because I was scared to speak."
Larkin became a professional jazz pianist in the 1970s and 1980s, playing many engagements in jazz clubs around Los Angeles. In 1986, he released the self-titled album John Larkin on the Transition label. This album was produced by Philip Cacayorin at the Hollywood Central Studios.
To advance his career in 1990, Larkin moved to Berlin, Germany. 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". Soon after, his agent Manfred Zähringer from Iceberg Records (Denmark) thought of combining scat-singing with modern dance music and hip hop sounds. Larkin was resistant at first, but BMG Hamburg was open.
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