It was released in November 1994 by RCA Records as his debut single, and was later re-released in July 1995 for his second album, Scatman's World (1995).

It reached number-one on the charts in at least ten countries and also won the March 1996 Echo Award in Germany for the best Rock/Pop single.

John Paul Larkin) suffered from a severe stutter by the time he learned to speak which led to an emotionally traumatic childhood.

At age twelve, he began to learn piano and was introduced to the art of scat singing two years later, through records by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, among others.

His agent Manfred Zähringer from Iceberg Records (Denmark) thought of combining scat singing with modern dance music and hip hop effects.

Larkin was worried that listeners would realise he stuttered, and his wife, Judy, suggested that he talk about it directly in his music.

He told in an interview, "The sound was a little crazy but at the end of this tape, I remember it like yesterday, he starts his scat singing improvisation.

Catania added, "Those days, the sounds were always the same, and I was coming up with an old jazz guy that had the talent to scat, something like that would shock the scene.

"[1] Dimitri Ehrlich from Entertainment Weekly wrote that "this synth-pop hit defines novelty: A chintzy drum machine pitter patters at a frantic pace while John, a Los Angeles jazz vocalist who has stuttered since childhood, frees himself from his speech impediment by scatting for three minutes and twenty seconds.

"[6] In his weekly UK chart commentary, James Masterton viewed it as "a bizarre part-rapped, part spoken, part-scatted dance hit performed by the enigmatic Scatman John who is almost as old as my father and really should know better.

"[8] James Hamilton from Music Week's RM Dance Update described it as "John Larkin's jaunty ragga scatted and 'I'm a Scatman' chanted Italian galloper".