The Upsetter
Unfortunately, I just discovered Lee “Scratch” Perry died last summer. Not sure how I missed it, but he deserves recognition. Perry is responsible as any other single person for the sound of much music heard today. He was madly influential in developing reggae and then what became rap, hip-hop, drum and base, electronic, much of today's popular soundscape.
He was born in Jamaica in 1936, describing his early life as, “My father worked on the road, my mother in the fields. We were very poor. I went to school. I didn’t learn anything at all. Everything I have learned comes from nature.”
In the 1960s as part of the ska and rock steady music, he helped developed reggae. In 1970, he produced the Wailers first two albums, placing a designing stamp on the sound that made Bob Marley a world figure after his death – Wailers before Scratch and after.
In the early 70s, Perry opened a small studio in Kingston called the Black Ark, out of which came the sounds helping form music afterward. Most notably, he defined “dub” — a drum beat, the base brought forward, deep and loud, then placing around this thumping heart repeated rhythms, sounds, and vocals from the original. This was the start of sampling. “Police and Thieves” was a “popular” Scratch tune in 1976, here is a dub.
Perry said, “The studio must be like a living thing, a life itself. The machine must be live and intelligent. Then I put my mind into the machine and the machine perform reality.”
Reggae and dub remained popularly unknown in the US well into the 1980s, though reggae was quite popular and influential to the Punk movement of England in the late 1970s. One of the Clash's first singles was a cover of “Police and Thieves,” in return Perry produced their song, “Complete Control.”
By the late 70s, Jamaica sounds were infiltrating New York and none other than Afrika Bambaataa states, “It was Lee Perry’s sound and the Jamaican toasters that inspired us to start hip-hop.” By the early 1980's, as his sounds began emanating from everyone, everywhere, Scratch burned down the Black Ark and left Jamaica.
He ended up in Switzerland. Always a very amusing guy, I read an interview with him long ago saying, “Living in Jamaica, I was a black man for much of my life, but since I've moved to Switzerland, I'm now a white man.”
The world is a more beautiful place with him having lived. God Love You Scratch.