KINGSTON, Jamaica— Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s incalculable influence reverberates through genres from reggae to hip-hop to dubstep to post-punk, from The Beastie Boys to The Clash. Considered by many to be the godfather of dub, he is known for his 1960s and 70s studio innovations, which were decades ahead of their time and gained worldwide acclaim for his inventive production, studio wizardry, his flamboyant attire and eccentric persona. 

Here are ten things about the Small Axe, the incomparable Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. 

1. He began in music as a gofer, then a talent scout, sold records for Clement Coxsone Dodd’s sound system in the late 1950s, while also cultivating his own recording career. He was also an uncredited songwriter and eventually performer under the pioneering producer Coxsone Dodd at Studio One. Famously cantankerous, Perry broke ranks with Dodd over personal and financial conflicts, moving to Joe Gibbs’s Amalgamated Records, where he did the ominous ‘I am the Upsetter’ to warn Coxsone, before later, also falling out with Gibbs. 

2. In 1980, when Paul McCartney was facing jail in Japan over a herb bust, he wrote a letter to the Japanese government defending him. And after the letter was sent, the Japanese authorities freed McCartney.

3. In 1968, Perry formed his own label, Upsetter Records, and his first major single, “People Funny Boy” — a jibe at Gibbs — was praised for its innovative use of a crying baby recording, an early use of a sample.

4. In 1973, Perry built a backyard studio in Kingston, naming it the “Black Ark,” which would birth countless reggae and dub classics. He famously admitted to torching it himself in 1979 over ‘bad vibes’. On the same day, Scratch reportedly shot himself in the foot. Of the incident, he told reporters: “So burning up the studio was a way of burning the demon, burning up the bad luck that had come to the people who lived in Jamaica. There is a Jewish saying that if you don’t burn the demon, maybe you die instead of him.”

5. Scratch started cutting his first records in the early 60’s, and his first hit was “Chicken Scratch” in 1965. Adept at layering rhythm and repetition, Perry became a sampling grandmaster whose work created new courses for music’s future.  He would also bury microphones under trees to get different sounds and blow ganja smoke over tapes and even run the tapes backwards.

6. When Perry was 60, he worked with the Beastie Boys on Hello Nasty in 1996. 

7. In the late 70s and early 80s, he worked with a variety of British musicians, from the Clash to John Martyn to Paul and Linda McCartney. 

8.  Before Perry came to Kingston, he got a job shovelling stones at a construction site. He claims that he got a job driving tractors and bulldozers, moving boulders in Negril.

9. Perry is a small man who stands around five foot, four inches, but has a huge presence.  He is also known as Lee, Little, King, Scratch, The Upsetter, Pipecock Jackson, Super Ape, Ringo, Emmanuel, The Rockstone, Small Axe.

10. He is known for his many eccentricities such as worshipping bananas, eating money, and baptising visitors with a garden hose. It is rumoured that in the 1980s, he tried to resurrect his Black Ark studio so he set up all of the equipment, then cut all of the wires and dug a duck pond in the studio instead. After three weeks and no ducks, Perry cast spells on all that were involved and took off to live in Europe. 

Claude Mills