Lee Scratch Perry

Rainford Hugh Perry was born on 20 March 1936 in the rural town of Kendal, in the parish of Hanover, Jamaica. His father worked on the roads and his mother in the fields, and he left school at 15. In the early 1960s he moved to Kingston, where Clement Coxsone Dodd hired him at Studio One, the famous reggae studio and label.

He took his nickname, Scratch, from his 1965 record The Chicken Scratch. In 1968 he left to form his own label, Upsetter Records, and a studio band, The Upsetters, who gave their name to the sound of his early records. Through the late 1960s and early 1970s he produced hits and played a key role in the early years of The Wailers, working on tracks with Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer including Duppy Conqueror and Small Axe.

In 1973 Perry built a studio in the backyard of his home in Kingston and called it the Black Ark. With four-track equipment and a great deal of invention, he turned echo, distortion, silence and technical accidents into art, and is said to have used stones, water and kitchen utensils in his recordings. He was among the first Jamaican producer-musicians to use the studio as an instrument, and pioneered dub, in which a rhythm track is stripped back and reshaped with echo, reverb and other effects.

At the Black Ark he made some of the classics of reggae: Police and Thieves by Junior Murvin, War Ina Babylon by Max Romeo, Heart of the Congos by The Congos, and his own Super Ape (1976), recorded with The Upsetters. He also worked with the Heptones, Junior Byles, Augustus Pablo and the Mighty Diamonds. The studio later fell into disrepair, but he went on working across the world.

His influence on hip hop, post-punk, dub and electronic dance music was vast, felt in the work of The Clash and the Beastie Boys, among others. His album Jamaican E.T. won the Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 2003, and several later albums were nominated. He received Jamaica's Order of Distinction, and died on 29 August 2021 at Noel Holmes Hospital in Lucea, aged 85. Prime Minister Andrew Holness called him one of the most important and creative figures to have come out of Jamaica.