The Wailers’ decision to record with Scratch as a producer - backed by The Upsetters, Scratch’s studio band (also a nickname for Scratch after the title of his diss record aimed at Coxsone) - in 1970 would transform the trio’s sound and, by extension, reggae itself. Scratch first worked with The Wailers (Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston) at Coxsone’s Studio One (in 1966 they sang backup on Perry’s salacious “Pussy Galore”). “People Funny Boy” is one of the first songs to utilize a reggae tempo, as Jamaican music transitioned out of its brief rocksteady period, and is also noteworthy for Scratch’s prescient use of a sample of a crying baby.
One of Perry’s earliest hits as a vocalist was “People Funny Boy,” from 1968, which took aim at another producer he worked with, Joe Gibbs. The first song Perry recorded was a ska ditty called “Chicken Scratch,” named after a popular dance of the era. Before long, he was scouting talent, arranging, producing, writing and even singing. Perry’s career began inauspiciously as a handy man/janitor working for three top Kingston producers, Prince Buster, Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reid, in Jamaica’s 1960s ska era. He is supposedly the first person to have recorded a Jamaican emcee, U-Roy, talking over a record, which planted the seed of hip-hop culture right there.” “It’s interesting that Kanye sampled ‘Chase the Devil’ because, in many ways, he’s the realization of a blueprint that existed in Scratch’s work back then,” Emch told Billboard in 2017.
Subatomic, a collective of musicians combining roots and dub reggae with electronic music and hip-hop, began touring with Scratch in 2010 in 2017 they reimagined Scratch’s 1976 classic dub album Super Ape as Super Ape Returns to Conquer, adding in a rendition of Max Romeo’s “Chase The Devil,” which Scratch produced and co-wrote with Romeo as an imaginative take on good triumphing over evil. “Scratch did his own writing, producing, ran his own label and studio, was involved in every aspect of his music and in many ways, he shaped the role of a producer that we see today with guys like Kanye West and Timbaland,” observed Emch, co-founder of Subatomic Sound System, in a 2017 interview with Billboard.
Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Legendary Jamaican Producer & Dub Pioneer, Dies at 85
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