You’ve probably never heard of Benjamin Sherman Crothers, so you’re unlikely to know he was born in Terre Haute, Ind.
If you’re of a certain age, however, you might know his stage name: Scatman Crothers. Did you know that his alias was born in Akron?
The bald, raspy-voiced entertainer, whose career peaked 40 years ago with recurring roles in television series such as the NBC sitcom Chico and the Man (1974-1978), voice-over work on Saturday cartoons including CBS’ Harlem Globetrotters (1970-71) and ABC’s Hong Kong Phooey (1974), as well as memorable parts in Hollywood movies such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), The Shootist (1976) and The Shining (1980), gained fame as a nightclub entertainer in Northeast Ohio.
Crothers was 27 when he visited Akron in 1937 for a limited engagement during the Great Depression. He ended up staying about eight years.
“I made Akron my headquarters in those days, living at the Green Turtle Hotel on Howard Street,” Crothers recalled in a 1975 interview with the Beacon Journal. “Even in those tough times, we filled the Kit Kat Club on North Main Street. And me and my combo played a regular gig on radio station WADC.”
In his act, Crothers sang and played several instruments, including piano, guitar and drums. WADC hired him to perform a live, 15-minute show from 1:45 to 2 p.m. five days a week, but a station manager didn’t think “Benjamin Sherman Crothers” was a name that listeners would remember.
“Well, out of a clear, blue sky I said, ‘Call me Scatman,’ ” Crothers recalled. “They laughed, said, ‘Why that?’ And I said ‘ ’Cause I do quite a bit of scattin’. Man, the requests I used to get on that show.”
“Scat” is a jazz style in which a singer improvises made-up words. “Skippity-zappity. Boppity-bippity-bip-a-dee-doo.”
“WADC’s Scat Man and his swing band is rating considerable notice by dialers,” the Beacon Journal noted. Crothers added a 9:30 p.m. radio show, which most likely was a remote broadcast from clubs because “The Scatman” was in big demand.
Harry A. Panagopoulos booked Crothers at Harry’s Black and Tan, an Akron club at West Bartges Street and Rhodes Avenue that endured vice raids for allowing dancing on Sundays. “Scat Man and His Black and Tan Band” performed at Brady Lake Park in Portage County while “Scat Man and His Original CBS Swing Band” played at Akron’s Merry-Go-Round on South Main.
Crothers met his future wife, Helen Sullivan, a Steubenville native, at a 1936 gig at Canton’s Commodore Hotel. He was black and she was white. They fell in love and got married in Canton in 1937.
“When he went away again, I missed him so much,” Helen Crothers recalled. “He missed me, too, so we decided to get married. He was playing in Akron, and I was still in Canton. … He got his blood test in Akron, and I got mine in Canton.”
Society was less accepting in those days, but Crothers said the interracial couple encountered few problems because they didn’t “make no big, flaunting issue of it.”
“Color don’t mean anything,” he insisted. “People gonna try to put you in a place one way or the other.”
Scatman and Helen moved to the Green Turtle, an Akron hotel owned by Leonard and Oda Forman on the southeast corner of North Howard Street and Federal Street (later Perkins Street and, still later, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard).
“They were really nice people there,” Helen Crothers recalled. “I spoke to everybody.”
The Sorosis Club booked Crothers as musical entertainment for a formal dance in February 1939 at the Canadian American Legion Hall. “Swank in top hats, tails and white tie, backless and in many instances strapless evening gowns the elite of Akron Negro society last night made merry at their gala ball of the year,” the Beacon Journal reported.
Crothers made $150 a week (about $2,600 today) at clubs. His band performed three shows a night for more than a year at the Blue Star Inn on Route 224 between Barberton and Wadsworth. “Come Out Tonight,” the club advertised. “Scat Your Worries Away.”
As part of the act, Crothers liked to serenade couples in the audience. “I was the first black cat to ever do that,” he said. “From table to table with my guitar. That’s called strolling. They used to call me the man with a thousand tunes.”
Jitterbug Jamboree, a dance contest featuring “Scatman and His Joy Boys,” was held Dec. 3, 1942, at the Akron Armory. Admission was 75 cents. “The hottest hepcats in town turned up to dance to the music of one Sherman Crothers — ‘The Scatman’ — and his orchestra,” the Beacon Journal reported. “Whites and Negroes shared the floor in harmony; there was no ‘mixed’ dancing.”
The Kit Kat Nite Club at 581 N. Main St. hired Crothers’ orchestra as the house band in 1942, and he performed there for a year before traveling to California to test the waters. When Crothers returned in April 1945, the Kit Kat had moved to 34 N. Main St.
“He’s back again!” the club advertised. “The one and only Scatman and His Hollywood Orchestra. ”
Crothers and his wife moved that summer to California, where he found a lucrative career as an actor, dancer, singer and musician with nearly 200 credits to his name.
He wasn’t sure what the future held, but he wasn’t too concerned.
“I got simple tastes,” he said. “Don’t go in for all that flashy business. I tell other people: You don’t go by what somebody drives or wears. You can be dressed the best and have a wicked heart.”
For the first time in 37 years, Crothers returned to Akron in 1982 as a celebrity guest of the All-American Soap Box Derby. Other visitors included Star Trek actors James Doohan and George Takei, KC and the Sunshine Band singer Harry Wayne Casey, CHiPs actor Brodie Greer and Father Murphy actor Richard Bergman.
“I’m just wondering if I can get my bowlegs into the car,” Crothers joked before rolling downhill.
Four years later, Scatman Crothers died Nov. 22, 1986, in Van Nuys, Calif., after battling lung cancer. He was 76.
“My philosophy has always been about like what Paul said in the Bible,” he told the Beacon Journal in 1975. “He said the race isn’t given to the swift. It’s given to the one who endures to the end. The Bible. Anything you want to know is in that book. Anything.”
Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.