Lee "Scratch" Perry

Rainford Hugh Perry was born on March 28, 1936, in Kendal, Hanover Parish, Jamaica. He entered the record business in Kingston in the early 1960s, working as a talent scout, engineer, and performer for producer Coxsone Dodd at Studio One.

By the late 1960s Perry had formed his own backing band and label, both called the Upsetters. In 1973 he built the Black Ark, a small studio in his backyard, where he produced landmark recordings including Bob Marley and the Wailers' early-to-mid-1970s sessions and Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves," using tape manipulation and improvised effects to invent much of the sonic vocabulary of dub.

Perry's productions made him one of reggae's most sampled and cited figures, with acknowledged influence on punk, hip-hop, and electronic music. In 1979 Perry set fire to the Black Ark himself, later saying "bad energy" needed to be released. He continued recording for decades afterward, winning the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album in 2003.

Perry cultivated a flamboyant, often surreal public persona that made him as famous for his eccentricity as for his musical innovation. He died on August 29, 2021, at a hospital in Lucea, Jamaica, at age 85, mourned globally as the loss of one of reggae's last founding-generation innovators.