SCATMAN JOHN – Live in Portugal (1995)

John Paul Larkin (1942-1999), known professionally as Scatman John, was an American musician. A prolific jazz pianist and vocalist for several decades, he rose to prominence during the 1990s through his fusion of scat singing and dance music. He recorded five albums, which were released between 1986 and 2001.

In the United States and Europe, Larkin is recognized for his 1995 singles “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” and “Scatman’s World”. He achieved his greatest success in Japan, where his album Scatman’s World (1995) sold over a million copies. Outside of his musical activities, he had deepened exchanges with stuttering organizations and established the Scatland Foundation in 1996 with the purpose of furthering research of and educating the public on stuttering. Larkin was a recipient of the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association’s Annie Glenn Award for outstanding service to the stuttering community and a posthumous inductee to the National Stuttering Association Hall of Fame.

Larkin was born in El Monte, California. He had a severe stutter by the time he learned to speak. This stutter contributed to his emotionally traumatic childhood. At age twelve, he began to learn the piano and was introduced to the art of scat singing two years later 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, and he “hid behind [the] piano because [he] was scared to speak.”

In late 1998, Larkin was diagnosed with lung cancer. In June 1999, he released his fourth and final album as Scatman John, Take Your Time. Shortly afterwards, he was sent into intensive treatment.

Larkin died at home in Los Angeles on December 3, 1999, at the age of 57. His ashes are scattered at sea. He was married to Judy McHugh Larkin, who died in 2023.