American singer, songwriter and pianist Scatman John was born as John Paul Larkin on 13th March 1942 in El Monte, California and passed away on 3rd December 1999. He was married.
As a toddler, John suffered from a severe stutter which affected his childhood. He started taking piano lessons at the age of 12 and 2 years later became acquainted with the scat singing art. The piano also helped him make up for his speech difficulties.
His musical career began in 1981 when he performed on a saxophone player’s album. Five years later, in 1986, John’s debut album was released. He moved to Germany in 1990, with the intention of ameliorating his career, discovered jazz and gave jazz performances. By this time, he had never sung in view of the stuttering, so he took a huge step to overcome this problem and started singing as well. He did very well and his agent came out with the idea of amalgamating scat singing with hip hop and dance music. John was sceptical at first but support from his wife and others, he took the plunge and went on to record his first single named ‘Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)’ released in 1994. This track became a worldwide hit the following year, selling 6 million records globally, and made John a star, and was later followed by a second single ‘Scatman’s World’. It was not as successful as his first single, but still received fair success.
Then, his debut album came out, and made it to the Top 10 in several countries. His second one, however, did not fare very well in Europe but was quite successful in Japan.
John’s final album was released in June 1999, just 6 months before his demise. He was diagnosed with lung cancer and passed away on 3rd December 1999. A studio, a compilation album and a non-album single were released after his death, as well as a biographical novel.
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