Loading details…
Artist
John Larkin
12+ albums
jazz80sUSAamericanscat
about
John Paul Larkin (El Monte, California, March 13, 1942-Los Angeles, California, December 3, 1999), better known by his stage name Scatman John, was a famous American scat singer who invented a unique fusion between the Scat and dance music. His song «Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop) John Larkin was his stage name before becoming John Scatman in 1995 Born in El Monte, California, John Paul Larkin suffered a serious stuttering since he began speaking, which led him to an emotionally traumatic childhood. Even at the peak of his success in 1995, journalists claimed that during interviews he hardly finished a sentence without repeating the last syllable six or seven times. At age 12 he began to go to piano lessons, and at age 14 he began in the art of scat through recordings of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, among others. The piano was for him a means of artistic expression that compensated for his difficulties in speaking. He stressed in an interview in 1996 that playing the piano was a way of speaking for me ... I hid behind the piano because I was afraid to speak. In the 1970s and 1980s he became a professional jazz pianist, playing several pieces in various clubs around Los Angeles. During this time of passionate interest in the art world, in which he devoured works and essays by Theodor Adorno and especially Michel Foucault, he adopted his characteristic appearance, composed of suit, tie and bowler hat, clearly inspired by his admired surrealist artist René Magritte.
top songs
albums
Listen To The Scatman: The Jazz Vocal/Piano Of John Larkin
John Larkin
Listen to the Scatman
Perry Mason - Old Time Radio Show, Vol. One
John Larkin LP
Listen To The Scatman: The Jazz Vocal/Piano Of John Larkin
Perry Mason - Old Time Radio Show, Vol. Two
▥
Take Your Time
Gathering Strength
▥
Scatman's World
Before Scatman: Early Sessions
▥
Stunt Goes Miles Davis