![]() ![]() Perry began building the four-track Black Ark studio in the backyard of his Kingston house in 1973 and for the next five years produced some of the great works of reggae from its cupboard-like domain. However, the subsequent album, African Herbsman, became one of the foundation stones for Marley’s recognition, and the two were to work together later, notably on the single Punky Reggae Party. It was Perry’s decision to sell his Wailers tapes to Trojan and pocket the money for himself that brought about a temporary end to his relationship with Marley. He went on to work as a freelance for various producers, and in 1968 set up his own Upsetter label.īy now he was a recognised leader in his field, and Trojan Records in London even established its own licensed version of the Upsetter imprint to put out his singles – one of which, Return of Django, reached No 5 in the UK charts in 1969. Fallings-out were not unusual where Perry was concerned, and his other longstanding nickname was “the upsetter”. Perry was one of Dodd’s key men in the early 60s, but was never well rewarded for his efforts and in 1966 he split acrimoniously with his boss over personal and financial matters. Among his early output of around 30 singles was Chicken Scratch, the song that gave him his nickname. Though he was not blessed with a great singing voice, from 1961 he also began recording songs in his own right. When Dodd moved into record production and created his Studio One label, Scratch helped him out by talent spotting, arranging sessions in the studio and writing songs. After a short-lived marriage to a local woman named Ruby Williams, he moved to Kingston in the early 60s, where he found work with Clement “Coxsone” Dodd’s famous sound system, which played American records to the masses at venues around the country. ![]() Born into harsh poverty in the rural Jamaican town of Kendal to Ina (nee Davis), a field-labourer, and Henry, who worked on the roads, he left school early, living itinerantly and making a precarious living in the north-west of the country as a professional dancer, dominoes player and bulldozer driver. Perry had always trodden the thin line between genius and insanity, and was an enigma throughout his life. The golden years came to an abrupt end in 1979, however, when an overworked Perry, always deeply eccentric but now increasingly unhinged by the consumption of unwise amounts of ganja and rum, burned the place down and walked into the wilderness. ![]() The ark was also one of the great cradles of dub music, where Perry, along with his collaborator King Tubby, got under the bonnet of reggae, stripped it down to its bare essentials and reassembled it in new form, adding a cacophony of sound effects, reverberations and electronic exclamation marks. His tiny 12-ft square workplace, cluttered with strange artefacts, produced a signature sound like no other, as distinctive in its own way as Phil Spector’s famous wall of sound. ![]() Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at Black Ark studios in Kingston, Jamaica. His adventurous, shamanistic spirit brought him to the very top as a reggae producer in the mid to late 1970s, when he ruled the Jamaican music scene from his fabled Black Ark studio in the capital, Kingston, creating critically acclaimed and popular records with artists such as the Heptones, Junior Byles, Max Romeo and the Congos. Urged on by Perry to take a more spiritual approach, he copied some of Perry’s vocal phrasing, built a new, bass-dominated sound and, with Perry’s help, began to release a string of new songs – such as Soul Rebel, Duppy Conqueror, Kaya and Small Axe – that would propel him on to the world stage.Īlthough Perry and Marley parted company on poor terms before Marley really hit the big time as a solo artist, it was Perry’s free-spirited unorthodoxy that drew the best out of the younger man.Įssentially a layman in music circles, Perry came up with ways of doing things that would rarely occur to trained musicians – and which they regularly rejected as unworkable until they tried them and found to the contrary. ![]()
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