Scatman Crothers

Actor, entertainer, and musician

• Born: May 23, 1910
• Birthplace: Terre Haute, Indiana
• Died: November 22, 1986
• Place of death: Van Nuys, California

In an entertainment industry career spanning more than fifty years, Crothers worked as a musician, comedian, and actor. A trailblazer in many respects, he was one of the first African American performers to work in all-white nightclubs and star on radio, television, and screen.

Early Life

Benjamin Sherman Crothers (KRUH-thurz) was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, to Benjamin Crothers, a cobbler and proprietor of a secondhand store, and Fredonia Lewis Crothers, a homemaker. Crothers had four older siblings. A well-liked student at Booker T. Washington Middle/Junior High School, he was considered brilliant by his teachers. Although he played football and baseball, his real interest was music. He was a self-taught drummer and guitarist who purchased his trademark four-string tenor Martin guitar in 1931. At the age of fourteen, after working odd jobs shining shoes, cleaning hats, and pressing clothes, he was approached by a local female piano player who played gangster-patronized speakeasies located in “The Terrible Hut,” a red-light district. He agreed to be her drummer, playing for tips.

To help his family financially, Crothers dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen. At nineteen, he went to Indianapolis to get a job playing ukulele but ended up working at a meat-packing plant. He finally formed his own band in 1930, while working various blue-collar jobs in order to survive. In 1932, he followed his dream to Dayton, where he got a daily fifteen-minute spot on radio station WFMK. It was then that he began using the name “Scatman” because he was told by program director Barbara Runyon that he needed a gimmick and a better name, and he was proficient at the form of musical improvisation known asscatting. Throughout his early musical career, Crothers as bandleader formed various trios, quintets, and seven-piece bands (various incarnations of Scat Man and His Band), although he preferred the smaller bands because he could better take care of his musicians.

Life’s Work

Crothers and his bands typically sold out shows and brought in new patronage to all-white clubs. He worked with the greats of his time, including trumpeter Benny Bailey and producer and composer Roger Erik Hyde, as well as pioneer bebop bands such as Montague’s Kentucky Serenaders, Bud Cromwell and His Orchestra, Eddie Brown and His Tennesseans, and Jerry Lynch and His Band. During a 1936 gig in Canton, Ohio, Crothers met Helen Sullivan, and the two began an interracial relationship that led to marriage. On the advice of Crothers’s agent, Bert Gervis, the couple moved to Los Angeles in 1948 so that he could be closer to Hollywood. Crothers brought with him a five-piece band, which he called the first bebop band on the West Coast. He worked for four years as a singer at Club Oasis, where he met comedian Redd Foxx in 1944. The two became lifelong friends. By the late 1940’s, Crothers also had struck up a friendship with NBC radio host Phil Harris (The Fitch Bandwagon and The Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show). Harris and Frankie Laine recognized Crothers’s talent, and Crothers began working with them on records and films.

In 1949, the Crotherses had their only child, Donna. That year, Crothers crossed over into television when he landed a role on Dixie Showboat as Dick Lane’s comic sidekick. The role made him the first black actor in Los Angeles to appear in a regular series. It also led to appearances on The Colgate Comedy Hour.

During that time, Crothers regularly appeared on Beulah and began two lifelong practices: making guest appearances whenever possible, showing up on the Steve Allen Show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, TheJack Benny Show, and TheJerry Lewis Show; and doing voice acting for children’s shows, such as the puppet show Time for Beany. Crothers’s foray into film began with small projects such as Yes Sir, Mr. Bones (1951), but his big break came in 1953 with Meet Me at the Fair. Billed either third or fourth (rare for a black performer), depending on the reporting source, Crothers played Enoch Jones, the friend and sidekick of an itinerant patent medicine salesman. He got to perform a few numbers, including the fan favorite “I Got the Shiniest Mouth in Town.”

Crothers followed up the role with musical cameos in various Universal Studios films such as East of Sumatra (1953), Walking My Baby Back Home (1953), Johnny Dark (1954), and The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961). During this period, he also began performing at United Service Organizations (USO) shows. In 1970, he tried more voice acting, becoming the voice of Scat Cat in the Disney blockbuster The Aristocats. On television, he provided the voice of Meadowlark Lemon in the cartoon series The Harlem Globetrotters (1970-1972), and from 1974 through 1976, he was the voice of Hong Kong Phooey. He lent his voice to Banjo the Woodpile Cat (1979), an animated short that drew attention because it was produced and directed by Don Bluth and other disenchanted Disney animators. His first dramatic role came in 1972, as a gangster in Columbia Pictures’ The King of Marvin Gardens. Crothers continued to make guest appearances on television, on shows such as Adam-12, Kojak, Ironside, and Love, American Style.

Crothers’s second big break came in 1974, with the role of Louie in the television series Chico and the Man. During that time, Crothers also won critical acclaim for his role as Orderly Turkle in the Academy Award-winning film One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), even though most of his scenes were cut. In 1980, he had supporting-actor billing in two major films, as the psychic cook Dick Hallorann in The Shining and as Doc Lynch in Bronco Billy.

As Crothers aged, he kept working, appearing in The Twilight Zone: The Movie and Two of a Kind in 1983 and in three short-lived television series, One of the Boys (1982), Casablanca (1983), and Morningstar/Eveningstar (1986). In 1985, he learned that he had lung cancer. He briefly returned to CBS’s Morningstar/Eveningstar, but by 1986, he had to retire. The cancer spread to his esophagus. Crothers died in his home in Van Nuys, California, on November 22, 1986.

Significance

With a television career spanning four decades, Crothers was a rare talent: a musician, comedian, actor, and voice actor who worked constantly during a time when African Americans were treated as second-class citizens. Although he was known to avoid confrontation, Crothers passed on jobs where he was discriminated against, and he opened many doors for black entertainers by bridging the gap between ethnic groups. As a singer, he released many singles, including “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” “Sunny Side of the Street,” and “The Gal Looks Good.” He joined the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1959 and was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1981.

Bibliography

Foxx, Redd, and Norma Miller. The Redd Foxx Encyclopedia of Black Humor. Pasadena, Calif.: Ward Ritchie Press, 1977. Brief interview with Crothers in which he addresses his career.

Haskins, Jim, and Helen Crothers. Scatman: An Authorized Biography of Scatman Crothers. New York: Welcome Rain, 2000. The first book-length treatment of Crothers’s life, including original interviews with Crothers, his wife, and his daughter.

“Scatman Crothers: After Fifty Years in Show Biz, an ’Overnight Success.’” Ebony 33, no. 9 (July, 1978): 62-66. Well-illustrated profile of Crothers that discusses his success on Chico and the Man and provides background on his early career.

Silos, Jill. “Scatman Crothers.” In Harlem Renaissance Lives from the African American National Biography, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Biography that examines Crothers’s career in terms of race.