Meet Lee Perry, a legend of Reggae music

Lee Perry is a legend of Reggae, a unique genius of music who was active from the 1960s and all the way to his death in 2021. Born in the rural Jamaican village of Kendal in 1936, Lee “Scratch” Perry began his surrealistic musical odyssey in the late ’50s, when he worked with ska man Prince Buster selling records for Clement “Coxsone” Dodd‘s Downbeat Sound System. Called “Little” Perry because of his stature (he stands at 4’11”), he was soon producing and recording at the centre of the Jamaican music industry, Studio One. After a falling out with Dodd, he went to work at Wirl Records with Joe Gibbs. But Perry and Gibbs never agreed on anything, so Perry eventually left and formed his own label in 1968, called Upsetter.

Perry’s first release on his label was a single entitled “People Funny Boy,” which was a direct attack upon Joe Gibbs. What is important about the record is that, along with selling extremely well in Jamaica, it was the first Jamaican pop record to use the loping, lazy, bass-driven beat that would soon become identified as the reggae “riddim” and signal the shift from the hyperkinetically upbeat ska to the pulsing, throbbing languor of “roots” reggae. In other words, Lee Perry pioneered Jamaican music’s shift from ska and rocksteady to reggae.

It was in the early ’70s, after hearing some of King Tubby‘s first dub experiments, that Perry also became interested in this form of aural manipulation. He quickly released a mind-boggling number of dub releases and eventually, in a fit of creative independence, opened his own studio, Black Ark. It was here that Perry recorded and produced some of the early, seminal Bob Marley tracks. Using the Upsetters rhythm section of bassist Aston “Familyman” Barrett and his drummer brother Carlton Barrett, Perry guided the Wailers through some of their finest moments, recording such powerful songs as “Duppy Conqueror” and “Small Axe.”

During the 1970s, Lee Perry became a super-producer, working with artists like Bob Marley & the Wailers, the Congos and Junior Murvin, in addition to releasing dub albums such as Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle (1973) and Super Ape (1976), often credited to his remarkable house band The Upsetters, which worked with just about every performer in Jamaica. Perry released an astonishing amount of work under his name and numerous, extremely creative pseudonyms: Jah Lion, Pipecock Jakxon, Super Ape, the Upsetter, and his most famous nickname, Scratch.

Lee Perry is unquestionably one of reggae’s most innovative, influential artists. His mixing-board innovations, from his early use of samples to hallucinatory echo and reverb effects, set the stage for generations of musical experimentation, particularly throughout electronic music and alternative/post-punk, and his free-association vocal style is a clear precedent for rap.

Find out more on Lee Perry with a detailed biography on allmusic.com and don’t miss this documentary narrated by Benicio Del Toro, which also recounts Perry’s relationship with Bob Marley, life in Jamaica, and the Congos whom he defined as vampires who marked the end of the Black Ark Studio.