A
very interesting individual indeed. He seems to have
made a career out of his stuttering problem, as it provided him with a natural ability to
scat like a madman. This style of
gibberish singing has long existed, but the
Scatman has co-opted it for his own purposes, creating a delightful hybrid of
synthetic dance pop,
latin grooves, and
mind-bending scat-robatics.
John was always interested in
jazz music. He grew up in the
Californian district of
El Sereno. He became a fairly adept
piano player, but
scat was his one
true love. He spent a
lot of time playing jazz, and his
drug problem continued to rage
out of control. Eventually he got cleaned up and began to work at making a
real career out of his stuttering and scat abilities. After failing to
incorporate it into jazz, he got involved in more
poppy, electronic dance music. Here he was able to make the
scat fit, and his career began it's
blast into the
commercial stratosphere.
One of his
claims to fame was having his
video for the song "
I'm the Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)" on the popular
MTV show
Beavis and Butthead. In his career he sold over
20 million records
worldwide. Unfortunately, he
passed away on
December 3rd, 1999. However, this hero of
scat will be remembered by many. If you are interested in finding out more about him, download the song "I'm the Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)" and
witness the
zenith of the Scatman's
scatting powers.