Lee “Scratch” Perry, whose pioneering work with roots reggae and dub opened up profound new depths in Jamaican music, has died aged 85. Jamaican media reported the news that he died in hospital in Lucea, northern Jamaica. No cause of death has yet been given. Andrew Holness, the country’s prime minister, sent “deep condolences” to Perry’s family.
The loping tempos of Perry’s work established the roots reggae sound that Bob Marley made world-famous, while his dub production, with its haunting use of space and echo, would have a profound influence on post-punk, hip-hop, dance music, and other genres. Along with his gnomic pronouncements and mystical air, he became one of Jamaica’s most unusual and esteemed artists. Keith Richards once described him as “the Salvador Dalí of music. He’s a mystery. The world is his instrument. You just have to listen.”
His passing, first reported by the Jamaican Observer, was mourned by the many artists with whom Perry has worked over a career that has spanned seven decades. He was a prolific solo artist, as well as a collaborator and producer, making more than 1,000 recordings in that time. The Beastie Boys, who first worked with Perry when he opened for them in Japan in 1996 before they joined forces on the track, Dr. Lee Ph.D., as a party of 1998’s Hello Nasty album, hailed the musician’s “pioneering spirit”.”We are truly grateful to have been inspired by and collaborated with this true legend,” the group said in a tweet. Flying Lotus, whose real name is Steven Ellison, wrote on Twitter: “Blessed journey into the infinite. RIP Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.”
Rapper Lupe Fiasco also remembered Perry, tweeting: “African blood is flowing through I veins so I and I shall never fade away.”
Glastonbury Festival’s Emily Eavis hailed the singer as a “musical genius”.
Eavis tweeted: “RIP the almighty Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, musical genius, free spirit and a regular Glastonbury performer. We shall miss him.”
Perry was born in rural Jamaica in 1936 and moved to the capital Kingston in the early 1960s.
In a 1984 interview with NME magazine, he said: “My father worked on the road, my mother in the fields. We were very poor. I went to school… I learned nothing at all. Everything I have learned has come from nature.”
He started his music career in the 1950s as an assistant at a reggae music label, before moving up to become a recording artist with the same label.
Over the next seven decades Perry went on to work with a number of fellow music legends, including Bob Marley and the Beastie Boys. He also won a Grammy in 2002, was nominated four other times – in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2014 – and received a Jamaican national honour, the Order of Distinction.
Perry’s career in music began in the late Fifties when he was employed to sell records for Clement “Coxsone” Dodd’s Downbeat Sound System;by the early Sixties, Dodd opened his famed Studio One, where Perry — nicknamed “Little” at the time, due to his 4’11″ stature — got his first experience in the recording studio, producing a few dozens song for the label.
“Coxsone never wanted to give a country boy a chance. No way. He took my songs and gave them to people like Delroy Wilson. I got no credit, certainly no money. I was being screwed.”
After falling out with Dodd, Perry jumped over to Joe Gibbs’ rival label Amalgamated Records, where Perry continued to produce in addition to furthering his own recording career as lead artist. Disagreements between the irascible Perry and Gibbs resulted in “Scratch” finally forming his own label Upsetter Records — a nod to Perry’s proclamation “I am the Upsetter” — in 1968.
Thanks to his popularity in Jamaica and the U.K. — where his 1968 single “People Funny Boy,” a slam at Gibbs, became a Top Five hit — in 1973, Perry was able to build his own backyard studio in Kingston, which he named “the Black Ark.” Here, Perry’s artistic endeavours led him to push the limits of the recording studio’s relatively antiquated capabilities to create his “versions.” As the architect of the remixed sound, Perry would layer (or overdub) his own rhythms and riddims with repetitive vocal hooks lifted from other songs — providing the blueprint for sampling in other genres — along with deep, reverberating bass, errant sound effects and disembodied horn melodies, all stewed together. Scratch’s son Sean Perry said of his eccentric father in People Funny Boy, “Mr. Perry is an enigma, but trust me, he is ahead of his time; it’s we who have to try to catch him up.”
Author: Linda .R. Jones
London, UK
lindarj83@gmail.com