26 May 1995
U.S. jazz vocalist John Larkin is here sharing his experience of having a severe stammer since childhood, how he used scat to manage it and give himself some confidence, and what lessons he feels others can learn from this. That part of ‘Scatman’ isn’t up for discussion or analysis; after all, it’s his experience. Instead, I’ll just consider how ‘Scatman’ sounds as a number one record.
Limited as my knowledge of the form is, I can’t say I enjoy Scatman John’s mechanical, machine-gun brand of scat in comparison to, say, Cab Calloway vamping it up playfully on ‘Minnie The Moocher’. The novelty effect of combining scat with house and techno beats is certainly distinctive, but also quite harsh and irritating. Scatman John walked so that Crazy Frog could hop.
Lyrically, the scat and the life story are straightforward, and John’s central lesson is a fairly routine ‘if I can do it, so can you’. However, right at the end ‘Scatman’ takes a turn for the weird. Now, unless there’s some pertinence to his life experience which I’ve missed, I honestly don’t know what to make of the final verse: “While you’re still sleepin’, the saints are still weepin’ ’cause / Things you call dead haven’t yet had the chance to be born”, which he delivers with the same earnest conviction as his earlier life story and life lessons. Perhaps I’m over-thinking it; this could just be an over-enthusiastic John bouncing from inspirational meme to pseudo-philosophical teen-angst poetry, or even just blustery filler. But that particular choice of words has my antennae twitching nervously. Whatever the explanation for that peculiar lyric, I’d venture that, as well as Scatman John’s life lessons, another takeaway from ‘Scatman’ should be to listen to other people share their experiences of their bodies.
