![]() ![]() He was a keynote speaker at the 1995 National Stutterer Project convention, and you can watch that here (Be warned, this is really moving, and definitely made me cry). He was a recipient of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Annie Glenn Award for outstanding service to the stuttering community. He did, and he was a wildly successful musician until his untimely death in 1999. He was worried when he was first making a name for himself that people would notice his stutter and laugh at him, and when he confided this in his wife, she suggested he address it in his work. Music provided an outlet for self expression that he could not find in speech, and that led him to a lifelong career in music, where he was known for catchy beats, scat singing, and positive uplifting lyrics.ĭid you also know that Scatman John’s hit single “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” is about overcoming his stutter, and is addressed to stutters who are struggling with their disorder. His whole interest in music came from his stutter, and he once remarked “ I hid behind my piano because I was scared to speak”. This article is an attempt to share much of what I didn’t know, and wish I did.ĭid you know that Scatman John had a debilitating stutter growing up, and this was a big cause of trauma in his early life? In fact John learned to scat listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Louie Armstrong records as a way of overcoming his stutter. Through some weird research rabbit holes, possibly fueled by a need to distract myself from doom scrolling the latest US election results, I ended up stumbling into some stories about the real Scatman John. I knew his music, grew up with it, but I didn’t really know him. ![]() ![]() You may not know about Scatman John, and if you think you do, maybe you are wrong. You can roughly divide the world into folks who think that’s a string of nonsensical jibberish, or folks that now have one of history’s catchiest tunes stuck in their head. “Whatever God wants is fine by me … I’ve had the very best life. ![]()
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