Scatman: An Authorized Biography of Scatman Crothers

Although he is best known for playing Louie the garbageman on the ’70s sitcom Chico and the Man and the extrasensory cook in The Shining, Scatman Crothers had had a 30-year career as a musician, songwriter, and bandleader before he took up acting in 1948. Jim Haskins (Mr. Bojangles) started Scatman a year before Crothers’ death in 1986 at age 76. In this breezy biography he pays tribute to a Hollywood trailblazer, one of the first black actors on a TV series (1948’s Dixie Showboat) and one of the first to obtain a dignified role in the movies. A serviceable, if predictable, biography. B