Scatman John
Scatman John was born in El Monte, California, United States on March 13th, 1942 and is the Pop Singer. At the age of 57, Scatman John biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, songs, and networth are available.
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John Paul Larkin (March 13, 1942 – December 3, 1999), also known as Scatman John, was an American musician and singer best known for his 1995 hits "Scatman (Ski-Bop-Bop)" and "Scatman's World." Scatman John has sold millions of albums around the world and was named Best New Artist in the Echo Awards in Germany.
He was the recipient of the Annie Glenn Award of the American Speech-Language Association for outstanding service to the stuttering community and the National Stuttering Association Hall of Fame.
Early life
Larkin was born in El Monte, California, and he was born. By the time he began to talk, he had a stuttering problem. This stutter contributed to his emotional distress. He began learning the piano at age 12 and was introduced to scat singing two years later, among others, through Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's albums. The piano gave him a form of expression to solve his vocal difficulties, but he "hid behind [the] piano because [he] was afraid to talk."
Musical career
His first known performance on a studio album was in 1981 on the album Animal Sounds by Sam Phipps. In 1986, he released the self-titled album John Larkin on the Transition label. This album was produced by John himself, along with Marcia Larkin. It featured Joe Farrell on saxophone.
To advance his career in 1990, Larkin moved to Berlin, Germany. Once there, he discovered an appreciative jazz culture and started playing jazz gigs. This was when he first decided to take a monumental step away from his insecurities and add singing to his act for the first time, heavily 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 effects. Larkin was hesitant at first, terrified of being laughed at and criticized once again, but BMG Hamburg was open.
Larkin was worried that listeners would realize he stuttered, and his wife, 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)". After his first big hit, he adopted the new name and persona of "Scatman" John.
In 1995, at age 53, Larkin became a worldwide star. Sales of his debut single were slow at first, but they gradually reached number one in many countries and sold over six million records worldwide. "Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)" charted highly across Europe and Japan and remains his biggest-selling and most well-known song. He later followed up with the song "Scatman's World" entering the UK Singles chart at number 10, which met lesser but still notable success, selling a million copies and charting highly throughout Europe. In 2019, "Scatman's World" had some resurgence after becoming an internet meme.
Following the success of these two singles, he released his debut album as Scatman John, also titled 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; the album eventually sold millions of copies worldwide, becoming so popular that a Scatman John design appeared on Coca-Cola cans. He began a promotional and concert tour of Europe and Asia. Referring to a performance in Spain, Larkin said, "the kids screamed for five minutes straight, I couldn't start the song".
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 took off in Japan, the country in which he would see success on a larger scale than anywhere else in the world. In Europe, subsequent singles failed to replicate the chart success of his first two singles, giving him the title two-hit wonder.
The Japanese version of Everybody Jam! included a total of five bonus tracks, including the hit singles there Su Su Su Super Ki Re i and "Pripri Scat", which were commissioned by Japanese companies for commercials for cosmetics and pudding respectively. The Ultraman franchise even jumped on the Scatman bandwagon, releasing a single titled Scatultraman, the cover art of which featured the Ultraman characters wearing Scatman's trademark hat and mustache. The album reached No. 45 in Switzerland.