Lee "Scratch" Perry (born Rainford Hugh Perry; 20 March 1936 – 29 August 2021) was a Jamaican record producer, singer and songwriter noted for his innovative studio techniques and production style. Perry was a pioneer in the 1970s development of dub music with his early adoption of remixing and studio effects to create new instrumental or vocal versions of existing reggae tracks. He worked with and produced for a wide variety of artists, including Bob Marley and the Wailers, Junior Murvin, the Congos, Max Romeo, the Heptones, Adrian Sherwood, the Beastie Boys, Ari Up, the Clash, the Orb, and many others.
Early life Rainford Hugh Perry was born on 20 March 1936 in Kendal, Jamaica, in the parish of Hanover, the third child of Ina Davis and Henry Perry. His mother had strong African traditions originating from her Yoruba ancestry that she passed on to her son. His parents were both laborers, but his father later became a professional dancer.
Lee left school at age 15 and lived in Hanover, working as a labourer to help build the first road in Negril. He eventually wound up in Clarendon where he got into the dance and music scene and earned the nickname "The Neat Little Thing". Lee later moved to Kingston after experiencing a mystical connection to stones ("When the stones clash, I hear like the thunder clash... and I hear words... These words send me to Kingston. Kingston means King's Stone, the Son of the King... the stone that I was throwing in Negril send me to King Stone for my graduation.") where he apprenticed at Studio One.
Career Early work Perry's musical career began in the late 1950s as a record seller for Clement Coxsone Dodd's sound system. As his sometimes turbulent relationship with Dodd developed, he found himself performing a variety of important tasks at Dodd's Studio One hit factory, going on to record nearly thirty songs for the label. Disagreements between the pair due to personality and financial conflicts led him to leave the studio and seek new musical outlets. He soon found a new home at Joe Gibbs's Amalgamated Records.
Working with Gibbs, Perry continued his recording career but, once again, financial problems caused conflict. Perry broke ranks with Gibbs in 1968 and formed his own label, Upsetter Records.
After leaving Gibbs, Perry attracted a core group of skilled session musicians who became the nucleus of the Upsetters, including pianist Gladstone Anderson, organist Winston Wright, bassist Clifton "Jackie" Jackson, and drummer Lloyd Adams. According to author Lloyd Bradley, Perry was able to attract musicians of this caliber less through money than through the creative freedom he offered, encouraging experimentation within the emerging reggae style and giving players greater latitude to develop arrangements and ideas.
His first major single "People Funny Boy", which was an insult directed at Gibbs, did well with 60,000 copies sold in Jamaica alone. It is notable for its innovative use of a sample (a crying baby) as well as a fast, chugging beat that would soon become identifiable as "reggae". Similarly his acrimonious 1967 single as Lee "King" Perry, "Run for Cover", was aimed at Coxsone.
From 1968 until 1972, he worked with the Upsetters. During this period, Perry released numerous recordings on a variety of record labels that he controlled, and many of his songs were popular in both Jamaica and the United Kingdom, where his instrumental "The Return of Django" was a top five hit in 1969. Although Perry did not yet have his own studio, Bradley notes that between 1968 and 1972 he produced a remarkable amount of music.
Around 1970, Perry began working with the Wailers after Bob Marley approached him about a collaboration, despite Perry having largely withdrawn from producing singers following the success of his Upsetter instrumentals. During their sessions at Randy's Recording Studio, Perry worked alongside engineer Errol Thompson, encouraging the use of effects including reverb and delay. Perry and members of the Wailers also drew material from everyday life, sometimes travelling around Kingston and developing songs based on incidents they encountered.
During the early 1970s, Perry worked primarily at Randy's Recording Studio, producing recordings under his own name, with the Upsetters, and with singers including Dave Barker, Leo Graham and Junior Byles. According to music historian Lloyd Bradley, Perry's distinctive production style emerged between 1971 and 1974, characterized by slower rhythms, dense mixes and an unconventional approach to lyrics.
The Black Ark In 1973, Perry built a studio in his back yard, the Black Ark, to have more control over his productions and continued to produce artists such as Bob Marley and the Wailers, Junior Byles, Junior Murvin, the Heptones, the Congos, and Max Romeo. He also started the Black Art label, on which many of the productions from the studio appeared.
Having his own studio allowed Perry to spend more time developing his productions. His arrangements were often conceived with later versions and mixes already in mind, and he sometimes directed musicians to record individual parts according to how he intended to use them in the finished production. Working with four-track equipment, Perry frequently combined tracks to free space for additional overdubs. Perry was known to remain in the studio for days at a time when mixing, taking no visitors or calls, and very little food or drink.
Music historian Lloyd Bradley described the 1976 album Super Ape as a culmination of Perry's work at the Black Ark, combining fragments of vocals and earlier recordings into dense arrangements while drawing thematically on Rastafari, righteousness and repatriation.
By 1978, stress and unwanted outside influences began to take their toll: both Perry and the Black Ark quickly fell into a state of disrepair. Eventually, the studio burned to the ground. Perry has constantly insisted that he burned the Black Ark himself in a fit of rage.
After the Black Ark (1980s and 1990s)
After the demise of the Black Ark in the early 1980s, Perry spent time in England and the United States, performing live and making erratic records with a variety of collaborators. His career took a new path in 1984 when he met Mark Downie (Marcus Upbeat) with whom he worked on the 1986 album Battle of Armagideon for Trojan. It was not until the late 1980s, when he began working with British producers Adrian Sherwood and Neil Fraser (who is better known as Mad Professor), that Perry's career began to get back on solid ground again. Perry also attributed a later resurgence of his creative muse to his deciding to quit drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis. In his earlier days, the act of producing for Perry was a frenzied and ritualistic one where he stated that "he blew smoke into the microphone so that the weed would get into the song." Perry stated in an interview that he wanted to see if "it was the smoke making the music or Lee Perry making the music. I found out it was me and that I don't need to smoke."
In 1998, Perry reached a wider global audience as vocalist on the track "Dr. Lee, PhD" from the Beastie Boys' album Hello Nasty.
Later career In 2003, Perry won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album with the album Jamaican E.T. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Perry number 100 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. He teamed up with a group of Swiss musicians and performed under the name Lee Perry and the White Belly Rats, and toured the United States in 2006 and 2007 using the New York City-based group Dub Is a Weapon as his backing band.
After meeting Andrew W.K. at SXSW in 2006, Perry invited him to co-produce his album Repentance. The album, released on 19 August 2008 through Narnack Records, featured several guest artists including Moby, Ari Up, producer Don Fleming, drummer Brian Chippendale, and bassist Josh Werner.
In 2007, Perry's song "Enter the Dragon" was sampled on the track "Carrots" by Panda Bear of Animal Collective. As well, Perry was selected by Animal Collective in 2011 to perform at All Tomorrow's Parties, which the band curated in May 2011. That same year, he recorded Rise Again with bassist and producer Bill Laswell; the album featured contributions from Tunde Adebimpe, Sly Dunbar, and Bernie Worrell, and was released on Laswell's M.O.D. Technologies label.
In 2008, Perry reunited with Adrian Sherwood on The Mighty Upsetter. Between 2007 and 2010, Perry recorded three albums with British producer Steve Marshall whom he met at Pyramid Arts Development in Hackney. The albums featured performances by Keith Richards and George Clinton. Two of these albums, End of an American Dream (2008) and Revelation (2010), received Grammy nominations in the category Best Reggae Album.
In 2009, Perry collaborated with Dubblestandart on their Return from Planet Dub double album, revisiting some of his material from the 1970s and 1980s, as well as collaborating on new material with Dubblestandart, some of which also included Ari Up of the Slits. In 2008, leading up to this release, Perry's first foray into the dubstep genre was released on 12" vinyl, a collaboration with Dubblestandart and New York City's Subatomic Sound System called "Iron Devil". That record was followed by several more reggae-oriented dubstep collaborations with Dubblestandart and Subatomic Sound System on digital and vinyl, first Blackboard Jungle volumes 1 and 2 (2009), featuring dancehall vocalist Jahdan Blakkamoore, then Chrome Optimism (2010), which also featured American filmmaker David Lynch. Following that, in 2010, Perry and Ari Up of the Slits collaborated on a limited-edition Subatomic Sound System 7" called "Hello, Hell Is Very Low", a rootical dubstep release that would turn out to be one of Ari Up's last recordings and the final release during her lifetime.
In 2010, Perry had his first ever solo art exhibition at Dem Passwords art gallery in Los Angeles, California. The show, titled "Secret Education", featured works on canvas, paper, and a video installation.
In 2011, The Upsetter, a documentary film about Perry, narrated by Benicio Del Toro, was released worldwide in theaters after its premiere at the 2008 SXSW Film Festival. The film was directed and produced by American film makers Ethan Higbee and Adam Bhala Lough, and opened in Los Angeles in March 2011. It continued to screen worldwide into 2012, with the DVD, iTunes, and Video on Demand following soon thereafter.
In 2012, Perry teamed with the Orb to produce The Orbserver in the Star House, which was recorded in Berlin over a period of several months. The album earned critical acclaim, and featured the single "Golden Clouds", named after the historic property located near Perry's hometown in Jamaica. The recording sessions were filmed by Volker Schaner and were part of the documentary Lee Scratch Perry's Vision of Paradise.
In August 2012, it was announced that Perry would receive Jamaica's sixth highest honour, the Order of Distinction, Commander class.Bonitto, Brian (2012), "Tosh gets OM", Jamaica Observer, 7 August 2012. Retrieved 7 August 2012.
In 2013, Perry performed at the first Dub Champions Festival in Vienna, a sold-out performance, backed by Dubblestandart with Adrian Sherwood handling the dub mix. Perry also performed at the first two Dub Champions Festivals in New York City in 2011 and 2012, backed by Subatomic Sound System. Perry performed at the 2013 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California.
Perry is featured as the DJ on the dub and reggae radio station "The Blue Ark" in Grand Theft Auto V. The station includes a number of dubs by Perry and the Upsetters including "Disco Devil" and "Grumblin' Dub".
In October 2013, it was announced that Perry will be awarded a Gold Musgrave Medal later that month by the Institute of Jamaica."'Scratch' and 'Chinna' to get Musgrave Medals", Jamaica Observer, 4 October 2013. Retrieved 4 October 2013