(b Kendal, Hanover Parish, 20 March 1936). Jamaican reggae producer. He moved to Kingston in the mid-1950s and began to work with the producer Clement ‘Sir Coxone’ Dodd on his mobile sound system. Moving into studio production and working as Coxone's talent scout, in 1965 Perry helped to produce some of the early recordings made by Bob Marley's vocal group, the Wailers. That same year he began recording under his own name; his first hit record Chicken Scratch earned him the nickname Scratch, by which he became popularly known. In 1967 he formed a band, the Upsetters, around the brothers Carlton (drums) and Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett (bass guitar). The following year, as the rock steady beat slowed into a new rhythmic format, Perry's innovatory hit record People Funny Boy helped to create what became known as reggae. In 1969 Perry teamed the Upsetters' instrumentalists with the Wailers' vocal trio and began to make the group recordings that launched Bob Marley's international career, including Small Axe, My Cup, Mr Brown and Duppy Conqueror. Perry effectively co-wrote some of Marley's mid-period songs, and their close collaboration continued sporadically until Marley's death in 1981.
Perry opened his Kingston recording studio, the Black Ark, in 1974, where for Island Records he produced some of the most important works of the reggae movement: Max Romeo's War Inna Babylon (1976), Junior Murvin's Police and Thieves (1977), the Upsetters' Super Ape dub album and the Congos' Heart of the Congos (1978). During this time he also worked with several European rock musicians. Since 1980 he has continued to record and distribute his work in Europe.
Perry's eccentric and avante-garde productions, conceived and recorded under notoriously primitive conditions, are best known for their odd effects including heavy repeating echo, spacey tape rewind, distortion, sudden noises, animal sounds and disorientating instrumental absences. He pioneered the technique of scratching records which was later an important part of the hip hop sound.
S. Davis: Reggae International (London, 1983)
C. Wilson: disc notes, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry: Chicken Scratch, Heartbeat CD HB 53 (1989)
S. Davis: Bob Marley (London, 1994)
B. Mack: ‘Return of the Super Ape: the Lives and Times of Lee “Scratch” Perry’, Grand Royal, no.2 (1995)
S. Heilig: ‘Showtime with Scratch’, The Beat, xvi/5–6 (1997)
STEPHEN DAVIS