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Scatman John
American musician (1942-1999) · United States · Musicians · Died at 57
Scatman John is read about 1,633 times a day, in 48 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?A jazz pianist who stuttered turned his impediment into a global phenomenon: scat singing over Eurodance beats, a collision that made "Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop" inescapable in the mid-'90s and moved a million copies in Japan alone.
A life in dates
Take Your TimeAlbum, 19991996Echo Pop Award for the Hit of the YearAward
Everybody Jam!Album, 19961995
Scatman's WorldAlbum1942Born13 March 1942Also in Deutsch
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748K subscribersAlbums 3
TTTake Your Time
EJEverybody Jam!
SWScatman's WorldAwards
About this person
John Paul Larkin spent decades as a working jazz pianist and vocalist before 1994, when he was in his early fifties and fused scat singing with dance music under the name Scatman John. The singles "Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)" and "Scatman's World" broke through in the United States and Europe, but Japan gave him his greatest success: his 1995 album Scatman's World sold over a million copies there. He recorded five albums between 1986 and 2001, and beyond the music he worked closely with stuttering organizations, founding the Scatland Foundation in 1996 to fund research and public education. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association gave him the Annie Glenn Award for his service to the stuttering community; after his death in 1999, the National Stuttering Association inducted him into its Hall of Fame.
In common with Scatman
Helene FischerBoth received Echo Pop Award for the Hit of the Year
GotyeBoth received Echo Pop Award for the Hit of the YearIsrael KamakawiwoʻoleBoth received Echo Pop Award for the Hit of the Year
Lou BegaBoth received Echo Pop Award for the Hit of the Year
Xavier NaidooBoth received Echo Pop Award for the Hit of the Year
Herbert GrönemeyerBoth received Echo Pop Award for the Hit of the YearFame.am measures public visibility signals. It does not measure human value, talent, morality, or credibility.